This Internet Thing is Starting to Seem Important Somehow

There's been a lot of interesting news this week, so I wanted to share a few links and reactions.

- YouTube is apparently working on a deal with the William Morris Agency to bring more professionally-produced content to the site. I do think celebs will attract a big audience on the site if they can figure out how to make short, funny, sexy stuff on a really tight budget. That tight budget thing is gonna be the issue...(And what about William Morris' 10% cut of all this action?)

- Netflix is successfully creating the perception that they will win the race to deliver movies over the Net to televisions. CEO Reed Hastings said this week that "streaming is energizing our growth." Netflix's fourth quarter results this week beat Wall Street's estimates, with revenues of $359 million.

- Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM hope to launch a new subscription TV channel for movies, to compete with HBO, Starz, and Showtime. No cable or satellite or telco provider has agreed to carry the channel yet, so it will appear first on the Web, this May. It'll be called Epix. Ummm, didn't Starz already try its own Web-based movie service...called Vongo? That didn't work so well. Of course, Epix might have some radically innovative new take on how to build and Internet movie service...

Let's hope.

3-D Gets 'Bloody'

What do you think.... will Lionsgate's 'My Bloody Valentine 3-D' help or hurt the deployment of digital 3-D equipment?

The New York Times wrote today about the mid-January release:

If “My Bloody Valentine 3D” is a success — and with a modest budget of about $20 million, success is easily within reach — the next big thing in horror could be at hand, said Joe Drake, the co-chief operating officer of Lionsgate and the president of the studio's motion picture group. “We see 3-D horror as financially lucrative and creatively exciting,” he said. “We want to break some new ground here in R-rated fare.”

...For studios like Lionsgate that focus almost exclusively on young moviegoers, the rush to 3-D technology is an attempt to adapt to the demands of the texting-while-driving-while-eating crowd. Teenagers and young adults, crucial to the health of movie exhibition, are increasingly unaccustomed to sitting still for two hours in a theater, studio executives say.

“I was excited to pursue the 3-D element because it feels really fresh and unique,” Patrick Lussier, who directed the “My Bloody Valentine” remake, said. “It’s visually stunning and a new way for this audience to experience a film but isn’t painful in the way some of the old 3-D films were, where they just rammed stuff in the audience’s face.”

The last time I talked with James Cameron about the spread of 3-D cinematography, he did express some worry about "down-market" 3-D releases. "Hopefully [3-D] doesn’t fall into that ghetto where it used to live, with 'Friday the 13th' or 'Jaws 3,'" he said.

Pioneering Download Site CinemaNow: Worth Just $3 Million

(Of course I didn't abandon my beloved CinemaTech... just took a long Thanksgiving vacation.)

Feels important to note that earlier this month, the pioneering digital download site CinemaNow was sold for a piddling $3 million to Sonic Solutions, a company that makes DVD-burning software. Founded in 1999 (before Movielink, and way before iTunes), CinemaNow had raised more than $30 million. Lionsgate Entertainment had been the main investor in the company, which offered rentals, downloads, and also the ability to burn some movies to a DVD.

Earlier this year, Curt Marvis, the long-time head of CinemaNow, shifted over to a digital media gig at Lionsgate.

Here's the official press release.

Studios Court Mr. Skin

- I found this story in today's NY Times fascinating: studios actually send screeners of new movies to the Web site MrSkin.com, to promote new releases that have nudity in them. From the story:

“The movie companies aren’t stupid,” [CEO Jim] McBride said. “I’m a guest on radio shows at least 300 times a year as the expert on celebrity nudity in film. If I’m on the radio talking about a movie like ‘Ask the Dust,’ and telling guys, ‘You’ve got to check it out: Salma Hayek has a full-frontal at the 33-minute mark,’ it’s going to make guys want to rent or buy the movie.”

More than 75 movie companies — including Universal, Fox, Paramount and Lionsgate — regularly send advance DVDs to Mr. McBride’s company. And his subscribers buy hundreds of DVDs every day, said Brian Sokel, director of marketing at TLAvideo.com, which sells DVDs on the site. (He declined to provide precise figures.)

Mr. Sokel finds nothing untoward about selling a film solely on nudity.

“That’s why filmmakers and Hollywood put sex scenes in movies — because it sells,” Mr. Sokel said. “People have a problem with raw or open sexuality, but for our company and for Mr. Skin, it doesn’t have to be a demonized concept. This is normal; you’re not a freak for wanting to see a Hollywood star in a film be naked.”

I wonder if the actresses in those scenes find this kind of niche marketing a little unseemly...

- The Times also has a piece about a new area on The Daily Reel that's intended to be a place for content creators and companies that need content to mingle.