First Made-For-Internet Movie To Premiere

The first made-for-the-Internet, "theatrically budgeted" movie will premiere on AOL this Halloween, AUTOMATIC producer Adam Shapiro told the attendees at this year's VON. Shapiro was part of a roundtable discussion about film and TV on the Web and how we get there.

discussion was Nick DeMartino, Senior Vice President of Media and Technology, AFI; Mark Langford, Vice President of Product Development, MovieBeam; and Michael Downing, Co-Founder and CEO, GoFish. A "refugee" from network TV production, Shapiro said he was "amazed" at the excitement surrounding video on the Net. The excitement drove his company to produce a teen-targeted horror movie entitled "Incubus" and release it through AOL on October 31. "The idea [is] that if anyone is going to bridge the convergence of the Internet and TV, it is going to be by young people like my 14 year-old daughter. This will be the first theatrically budgeted film for the Internet." "Does it include snakes?" asks a wisecracking audience member. Shapiro showed a preview to remove the mystery. * * Michael, Downing, a good executive, knows his numbers. GoFish's interactive reality program, Online Dream Date, attracted 1.6 million visitors in 4 weeks time, streaming 4 million videos during that time. Michael also says that 80 percent of Hollywood is unemployed at any given time. So you know what that means - cheap labor! Ahem. He didn't say cheap labor. He said something about "professional grade content" being available. And how do online video and film pioneers pay for all this talent, content, and bandwidth? "I predict that within two years there will be groups acting like ad agencies that will produce deficit financing to fund Internet films," he said. Just like the old days, then. Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl Bookmark Murdok: