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Warner Bros. Flixster App adds iPad and iPhone to UltraViolet Offerings

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November 14, 2011
  • The new “Harry Potter” Blu-ray disc will include an UltraViolet download from Flixster, now that Warner Bros. has added a new feature to the UV service.
  • “Today, the updated Flixster app enables users to not only stream movies available on UltraViolet, but also download them to iPads and iPhones, a feature that was missing from Warner’s initial movie releases on UltraViolet,” reports CNET.
  • When fans purchase the three-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2,” they’ll also have access to a copy they can maintain in the Flixster cloud.
  • Warner Bros. became the first studio to adopt UltraViolet, with its release of “Horrible Bosses” last month. “Warner boasts 21 percent of the DVD market, the largest share of any of the major studios,” indicates the article.

From Reddit Comments Thread to Screenplay to Warner Bros. Movie

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October 18, 2011
  • A short story originally posted as a series of comments on social news site Reddit will become the basis for a Warner Bros. feature film.
  • “Rome, Sweet Rome” is an historical sci-fi tale written by James Erwin, a two-time “Jeopardy!” winner.
  • Erwin (as Prufrock451 on Reddit) was responding to another user who asked the community, “Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus if I traveled back in time with a modern U.S. Marine infantry battalion or MEU?”
  • The posts Erwin subsequently composed as a short story became the top-rated comments on Reddit and “inspired fan-art, fiction spin-offs and even a mock-up movie trailer.”
  • Madhouse Entertainment caught wind of the RsR subreddit community and pitched the story to a Warner Bros. exec, who pushed to “move aggressively” to acquire the rights.

CinemaNow Introduces Availability of HD Movies from Fox and Warner Bros.

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October 12, 2011
  • CinemaNow — the online video service launched by electronics chain Best Buy in 2010 — has announced it will offer 1080p HD movies from Fox and Warner Bros. on personal computers. “Until now, only standard-definition movies were available from CinemaNow on the PC,” writes Carolyn Giardina in The Hollywood Reporter.
  • Thomas Gewecke, president of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, indicates that CinemaNow is using Intel technology to make secure HD content available. “Intel Insider is a hardware-based security technology in second-generation Intel Core processors,” reports THR, “which is the fastest-shipping Intel product with more than 75 million units shipped to date.”
  • “The partnership with Intel and Best Buy’s CinemaNow to bring HD digital downloads of our movies to the PC will expand our reach to millions of devices in the U.S. and potentially more around the world,” adds Mike Dunn, worldwide president at 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
  • CinemaNow currently offers approximately 15,000 movies and TV shows.

YouTube is Going Hollywood: Finalizing Deals with Media Companies

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October 10, 2011
  • YouTube is reportedly putting up $100 million in advances to well-known personalities and major media companies to produce original content channels on on its video site.
  • The plans include attracting major advertisers and getting higher ad rates for professional video programming. Insiders suggest that YouTube hopes to launch the channels sometime next year.
  • The Wall Street Journal reports that agreements are underway with the likes of pro skateboarder Tony Hawk, Warner Bros., News Corp.’s ShineReveille unit, BermanBraun, Fremantle Media (“The X Factor”), “CSI” creator Anthony Zuiker, and others.
  • According to WSJ: “With its channels initiative, Google — which has been under pressure to turn YouTube into a profit center since buying the site for $1.6 billion in 2006 — is aiming to position the site for the rise of televisions and cable set-top boxes that let people watch online video in their living rooms, said the people familiar with the matter. More people are also watching videos on their smartphones and tablets, pressuring traditional cable and satellite operators to make content available on smaller screens.”
  • ComScore numbers indicate YouTube had more than 600 million unique visits in September.

UltraViolet Announces Global Roll-Out: Studios Get Ready for the Cloud

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October 5, 2011
  • UltraViolet (UV), the digital locker system that allows viewing of content across multiple devices, will roll out on October 11th in the U.S. with an expanded global rollout expected in the months to follow.
  • “All of the major studios are supporting the new cloud-based product, although Disney is not one of the more than 70 official members of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, which oversees UV,” reports Variety.
  • Warner Bros. exec Justin Herz said this week that his studio will provide half of its movie and TV catalog available on UltraViolet by the end of 2012. The first UV release, Warners’ “Horrible Bosses,” will reportedly be released Tuesday, to be followed by the availability of “Green Lantern.”
  • Fox suggested that “a significant” amount of its content would soon be UV-enabled, while Sony plans to launch with “The Smurfs” and “Friends With Benefits.”
  • “Studios that have signed up for UV hope the new technology will re-ignite the home entertainment market and boost revenues following the collapse of DVD sales and the failure of Blu-ray to generate excitement among consumers,” adds Variety. “UV-enabled discs allow buyers to watch the same content on 12 different devices with an Internet connection, including connected TVs, laptops, tablets or mobiles, once they open a streaming account.”

Music Integration: Will Facebook Become an All-In-One Social Media Hub?

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September 1, 2011
  • Facebook has informed media executives that it will begin allowing online music services such as Spotify and Rdio to publish user activity on Facebook pages and could allow music playback without leaving the site.
  • The announcement is part of Facebook’s efforts to become a social center for media including music, games and movies.
  • According to The Wall Street Journal: “CNBC reported Wednesday that Facebook was working to create a music platform. In response, Facebook said: ‘Many of the most popular music services around the world are integrated with Facebook and we’re constantly talking to our partners about ways to improve these integrations.'”
  • Facebook was reportedly encouraged to pursue the music plan following success with social games such as “FarmVille” by Zynga Inc. The social media site is also integrating movies through deals with the likes of Warner Bros.

Movie Site Flickme Launches, Betting Big on Social Interaction

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September 1, 2011
  • Former COO of Funny or Die Mitch Galbraith launched the beta version of social streaming movie service flickme this week with deals in place from Sony and Warner Bros. The venture was founded by Galbraith and Mark Smallcombe, who received funding from Sequoia Capital.
  • The new service lets users rent or purchase movies and watch instantly, via their Facebook accounts. Users can also socially connect with friends to share deals and recommendations. According to the website: “About one third of the movies on flickme feature pass-along perks: the first person to rent or buy can share special offers with friends, including discounts and access to rentals before they are normally available.”
  • The service will face competition from streamers such as iTunes and Netflix but is hoping the social connection will make it distinct.
  • “We’ve built a short cut to find movies you’ll love,” says Galbraith. “We’re assembling a library of thousands of top Hollywood titles and enabling highly personalized recommendations from close friends to ensure every movie you watch on flickme is a winner.”

Miramax is the Latest to Offer Facebook Movie Rental App

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August 23, 2011
  • Miramax is following in the footsteps of Warner Bros., Paramount and Universal by making its films available on Facebook.
  • The Miramax eXperience will initially offer 20 titles in the U.S. and 10 each in Great Britain and Turkey (available films include “Good Will Hunting,” “Spy Kids,” “Chicago” and “Cold Mountain”).
  • Movies will be made available for 30 Facebook credits (equivalent to $3) and can be viewed on Facebook, the iPad and Google TV.
  • Miramax hopes to build its reach to 150 million+ Facebook friends in the next 18 months.
  • “The iTunes-like nature of Miramax’s Facebook movie rentals (i.e. per-movie charge, rather than a subscription fee) could prove very effective,” reports Social Times. “A lot of online movie watchers aren’t ready to commit to a subscription service like Netflix or Hulu Plus. Renting a single movie from Facebook may be more their style, and a $3 movie rental sounds like a pretty good deal, if you ask me.”

Warner Bros. Rolls Out Flixster Collections Video Service this Week

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August 5, 2011
  • Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes announced the availability of Flixster Collections, a social movie portal that went into public beta this week.
  • The service, a revamped version of the Flixster product acquired earlier this year, encourages users to share what they’ve watched with friends.
  • If there’s something you want to see, for example, Flixster directs you back to Amazon, iTunes, Hulu and Netflix (as well as your hard drive, if you let it). There are also links for theatrical films, including reviews, trailers and ticketing services.
  • “You can also imagine how this will tie in to Ultraviolet, the cloud/locker system for video that Warner and a big coalition of movie studios and tech companies (except for Apple and Amazon) are pushing,” writes Peter Kafka in All Things D.
  • So far, Flixster Collections is available for PCs and Macs, but no mobile app yet.

New Movie App from Warner Bros. Coming this Summer

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April 17, 2011

Warner Brothers plans to release a new app by this summer code-named “Digital Everywhere.” The studio hopes the app will serve as the ultimate destination for purchasing all digital movies, not just those produced by Warner Bros. According to CNBC, “The way iTunes changed music, Warner Brothers wants to change movies.”

Digital Everywhere is not a retailer like iTunes. It gathers the many ways a consumer can rent or purchase movies and organizes an individual’s library of movie titles and TV programs. It then provides access to this library from any Internet-connected device through the cloud authentication system known as UltraViolet.

The app does much more than serve as a content aggregator — and intends to increase the value of a digital movie purchase by including features such as: trailers, clips, reviews, related articles, data from IMDb and Box Office Mojo, release schedules, recommendations and Facebook integration. CNBC reports that Digital Everywhere, “brings DVDs, the movies on a hard drive, digital films from iTunes, Netflix queues, and eventually digital Amazon purchases, into one easily-sortable library.”

If the Warner Bros. app delivers all that it promises, and movie fans respond to the cloud integration approach, we could be on the cusp of experiencing a significant change in how we access and manage our digital media.

Warner Bros. Looks to Facebook for Movie Rentals

By
March 9, 2011

Looking for a new distribution channel in the face of decreasing DVD sales — and new ways to leverage increasing consumer time spent online — Warner Bros. Entertainment announced it will start renting movies via the popular social networking site Facebook. The first offering will be the 2008 Batman hit, “The Dark Knight.” The choice was based largely on the fact that the film has already been “liked” by 3.9 million Facebook users.

The studio created the rental application independently of Facebook, so the films will be hosted and streamed by a third party.

According to comScore, Facebook was the sixth-most popular video site in the U.S. in January. Despite its growing popularity for streaming video, Facebook has not announced any plans to launch its own paid video service.

Some analysts responded to the news that Facebook could become a serious competitor for Netflix and other online video services.

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