Gay Today: Entertainment

Hollywood, Movies & the Internet

By Warren D. Adkins

Whether the big studios like it or not, movieland entertainment sites are finding their way onto the web. While still in their infancy, on-line pioneers have already managed to make some of Hollywood's moneyed moguls nervous.

Most home viewers, of course, haven't yet acquired those speedy modems needed to make Internet films palatable. Waiting several hours, in some instances, to download movies strikes most fans as a posture inferior to their having to wait in lines outside theatres.

Steven Spielberg and his studio Dreamworks SKG are taking the initiative in developing movies for the Internet

Even so, short-form web entertainment—via Warner Brothers-- is blossoming. New types of interactive amusements are creeping on-line as well, to provide bored workers seeking breaks from the monotony of their jobs to focus on foolishness and fun. Entertaindom.com, for example, will soon allow viewers to play either God or the devil and to vote on whether Hollywood stars—living or dead-- should go to heaven or to hell.

Interactive entertainment is the one feature that TV sets and movie theatres lack. The web also beckons to as yet unknown creators, avant garde filmmakers whose fare will compete with that of famed directors, stars and producers. This development is particularly rattling to an industry already in competition with amateurs whose works have proved commercial successes launched at film festivals outside Hollywood boundaries.

Jim Banister, Warner Brothers' online executive vice-president, says that the new venues in which his company is experimenting are "as different from television as television is from radio."

In most cases, videos still remain confined to small boxes on viewers' computer screens. Even short films often freeze, or are blurry. Such impediments, however, will be increasingly on the wane as faster modems are installed.

Expect to see Bugs as one of the first stars of Internet movies
Courtesy of Warner Bros.

Currently, at least twelve sites are showing movies made by independents. America Online, according to recent reports, has already invested $30 million in Blockbuster, Inc., a video-rental subsidiary of Viacom. Films are being readied for web delivery.

Atomfilms is providing shorts by independent filmmakers, while Entertaindom is offering Looney Tunes cartoons and short films. Younger audiences have been targeted by Wirebreak Entertainment and offer such come-ons as "Girls' Locker Talk".

Steven Spielberg's creation, Dreamworks SKG, is offering with Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment, to provide a variety of shorts and animated games on Pop.com.

TV network executives, still unconvinced, promise, nevertheless, to buy up successful Internet films and, perhaps, to run them on television. The music moguls note that amateur bands promoting their music on the Internet have seldom been successful and that they haven't yet become competitive threats to major record labels.

Previous Entertainment Features from the GayToday Archive:
South Park

West Holly Halloweenies A Film by Ernie Potvin

Queen City
Invaders From A Forbidden Planet

Related Sites:
Pop.com

Entertaindom.com
GayToday does not endorse related sites.

Leaders in the burgeoning Internet entertainment field favor shorts, they say, not only because of the current technological hurdles they must face, but because, some believe, most people seeking entertainment would rather "lean back" in their living rooms than "lean forward" toward their computers.

Even so, these same leaders chide Hollywood for its reticence, predicting that if backward big studios fail to seize the moment, they will, in the long run, lose the future.