Fox and Movielink in online movie deal

Fox and Movielink in online movie deal
LOS ANGELES - Twentieth Century Fox has entered into an agreement to offer movies online with Movielink, the joint venture of five Hollywood studios. This deal means that for the first time Movielink is in a position to offer movies produced by all major studios for the Net audience.

This agreement was announced on Monday and is another milestone in the distribution of movies.

This segment has gone through a sea change lately with film distributors looking for new ways to distribute their products including podcasting on Apple's iPod. The video iPod offered some clips and Steve Jobs had called upon content providers to line up to offer their products on Apple's star seller.

Fox has previously offered its content to CinemaNow.com, but was reluctant to sign up with Movielink until more homes had access to high-speed Internet connections;

Peter Levinsohn, president of Worldwide Pay Television and Digital Media at Fox, a subsidiary of New York-based News Corp was of the opinion that the online movie segment was set to grow phenomenally, "Broadband connections continue to improve, and the movement to (direct film delivery) to TV continues to become more of a reality. As with any consumer product, we want to make sure we're in every distribution outlet. I think you're going to see us be a lot more aggressive in the next few months. This marketplace is really going to start to grow," he said.

On its part Movielink has begun to look at the whole thing as business and promises that the next two years will be driven by huge demand for online movies, "All the testing has been done, so now it's about growing a business.

There's no question things are opening up. The end of 2005 and into 2006 is really a watershed year. I think you're beginning to see a snowball effect," said Jim Ramo, chief executive at Movielink. The first Fox movie that is to be offered on Movielink is "Robots."