VANCOUVER, BC and LOS ANGELES, – Lions Gate Entertainment’s CinemaNow, Inc. a leading distributor of feature films on-demand over the Internet, will begin offering on-demand, streaming fee-based versions of current Lions Gate films in the traditional pay-per-view window. This
represents the first time that any studio has offered first-run video-on-
demand films over the Internet in this window.
“This is a huge step for CinemaNow in establishing a leadership position
in the broadband based, video-on-demand distribution business,” commented Curt
Marvis, CinemaNow CEO. “With the recent announcements by several of the major
studios that they are moving into the Internet based video-on-demand market
this year, CinemaNow and Lions Gate are proud to be the first players to
explore this new distribution platform. Since our launch in 1999, CinemaNow
has put together the building blocks essential to running a viable platform
for video-on-demand distribution into the home; we’re now positioned to take
the industry lead as advances in streaming technology make it feasible to
distribute video-on-demand to consumers on a broad scale.”
The partial slate of films that are due to run on CinemaNow beginning
this month and during 2001 include: the acclaimed drama “The Last September”
with Oscar winner Maggie Smith; the Abbie Hoffman story, “Steal This Movie,”
starring Vincent D’Onofrio, Janeane Garofalo, and Jeanne Tripplehorn; Wim
Wenders’s “Million Dollar Hotel,” based on a story by U2’s Bono and starring
Jeremy Davies, Milla Jovovich and Mel Gibson; “Skipped Parts” starring
Jennifer Jason Leigh and Drew Barrymore; “Once In The Life” starring and
directed by Laurence Fishburne; and “The Bogus Witch Project,” a comedy
compilation starring Pauly Shore. CinemaNow debuted its streaming fee-based,
video-on-demand service on Nov. 9, 2000 with the Russell Crowe and Youki Kudoh
starrer “Heaven’s Burning.”
Peter Block, Lions Gate’s President of Home Entertainment, Acquisitions,
and New Media said of the service launch, “CinemaNow has always represented a
means for us to develop a new distribution opportunity that is both additive
and complementary to our current business. We view this as both an emerging
new revenue stream for the company, as well as a valuable marketing tool to
enhance the visibility of certain film properties among the online audience.”
CinemaNow controls exclusive Internet distribution rights to
approximately 1000 films from the Lions Gate, Trimark Pictures, Avalanche,
Allied Artists, Tai Seng, and Salvation film libraries. Technology partners on
the CinemaNow pay-per-view service include Microsoft, with use of their
Windows Media 7 Player and Digital Rights Management technology, and iBeam
Broadcasting Corp., the leading global streaming media network. The company
recently announced a second round of financing led by investors Microsoft and
BlockBuster.
