AOL Video Dips into Movie Biz

Fri., Aug. 25, 2006 2:50 PM PDT by Natalie Finn

AOL has gone and thrown even more digital ingredients into the entertainment mix.

The Internet powerhouse has announced that it is making feature films from the libraries of Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and 20th Century Fox available for downloading from its AOL Video Website.

AOL also inked a deal with Fox to offer episodes from TV shows such as 24, Prison Break and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, along with older series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, marking the first time AOL has hooked up with a broadcast network.

Films are priced at $9.99, $14.99 and $19.99, depending on age and popularity. Dave Chappelle's Block Party, for instance, is currently going for $19.99, while Donnie Brasco can be yours for $9.99. Hitch, Spider-Man 2, Inside Man and Black Hawk Down are some of the other movies also currently available, but AOL said that hundreds of titles will be added in the next few weeks, including The Matrix and American Pie.

"We're in a position where we can nurture and foster the behavior of watching longer-form content," Josh Freeman, VP of AOL Video, told Daily Variety.

Fox's portion of the deal comes almost two weeks after News Corp. announced that episodes of Fox-owned shows and 20th Century Fox films were headed for the gaming Website Direct2Drive, where they can be downloaded and then watched on Microsoft Windows Media Player-compatible devices. As in, not on iPods.

But then again, Prison Break, 24 and the like are also available from Apple's iTunes Music Store. So the question really is, where can't you watch a Fox show?

AOL and Sony have partnered up, as well, to stream free episodes of older TV shows on AOL Video, such as Starsky and Hutch and SWAT, adding to the list of gems (Perfect Strangers, anyone?) already available via AOL Television's In2TV site.

With its new acquisitions, AOL is shoring up its status as a one-stop shop (or sample platter) for downloads, music videos, movie trailers, YouTube.com and Google Video-style viral video clips and other forms of bite-size visual entertainment.

Sony Pictures Entertainment also jumped in the pool last Wednesday, purchasing online video service Grouper Networks Inc. for $65 million, so now Sony, too, can have a piece of the kittens-practicing kung-fu, Mentos-and-Diet Coke-mixing trend in online entertainment.

Also expanding upon its promise to maximize your viewing options, CBS cemented a deal with 20th Century Fox TV and Warner Bros. Thursday to stream series such as How I Met Your Mother and The New Adventures of Old Christine, which air on CBS but are produced by those studios, on the network's ad-supported broadband channel, Innertube, as part of a four-week promotion next month.

CBS announced last week that Innertube would start showing episodes of all three CSIs, NCIS, Numb3rs, Survivor and Jericho. With the new deal in place, episodes of Shark, The Unit, The Class and Smith will also be available for free, yet commercial-interrupted, viewing for a week after the episode initially airs on CBS.

"Streaming episodes on Innertube creates more opportunities for audiences to discover our new and returning series at a critical time of the year when audiences are settling into their viewing patterns," Nancy Tellem, president of CBS Paramount Network Television Entertainment Group, said.

With so many options, who needs patterns anymore?