A new joint venture from Intel and Morgan Freeman

Intel and Revelations Entertainment, Morgan Freeman's production company, announced a new joint venture today called ClickStar.

"Our view is that making content available on the Internet is not an option--it is an imperative for the industry, given piracy and consumer demands for flexibility," said ClickStar's new chief executive officer, Nizar Allibhoy, a former Sony Pictures executive. "Our motto is, 'Anytime, anyplace, on any device.'"

That includes offering first-run films still in theaters. Don't they know that that'll spur most big theater-owners to boycott them?

Later, writer John Borland observes:

A handful of technological and cultural factors are coming together to make the movie business--and the role of movies online--look very much like the music business in the years just before the release of iTunes in 2003.

Dead on.

Earlier today, another CNET article by the same writer asked, "Where's the iTunes for movies?"

Hollywood is too in love with its own soaring DVD revenues to risk supporting an attractive Internet alternative, and it needs to be shown that video-on-demand services can make money...