"Just as MTV introduced a new entertainment forum for music videos, we think this new entertprise will offer a new form of of entertainment for the rapidly growing population of internet users," says DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg. The DreamWorks deal with Howard's Imagine Entertainment is at least in part a bid by Spielberg and friends to create a platform to develop new characters - the director points out The Simpsons has its roots in short films created by Matt Groening for The Tracy Ullman Show - and in part to showcase new talent who would otherwise have difficulty gaining exposure. Another AtomFilms production, an eight-minute parody of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan- Saving Ryan's Privates, in which a warbride learns her husband has suffered an embarrassing injury during the Normandy invasion - has been watched by more than 100,000 people since its launch in September.ĭigital Entertainment, backed by Microsoft and Dell, has 13 "series" including webcasts about extreme sports, one for Christian teens and a drama about urban Latino women running on its site.Įxecutives at these companies say that they have been swamped with pitches from young film-makers and cartoonists wanting to place their creations online.ĪtomFilms, which boasts former Universal Studios chief Frank Biondi on its board of directors and investment from Warner Bros, says it has already reviewed 15,000 short films in the six months the company has been running.
Since June, when AtomFilms released an interactive cartoon in which visitors get to fry a gerbil in a microwave, the piece has been hdownloaded half a million times, and emailed on an estimated 10 million times.
Now there is a rush on in the film business to colonise the internet in much the same way the music industry has come round to the idea that digital distribution will soon revolutionise its business.Įntrants to this new field such as Digital Entertainment Network, and AtomFilm have begun to succeed where earlier efforts, like the online sitcom The Spot, failed. Over the last year, a number of upstarts have begun transmitting, or webcasting, trailer-length, low budget films and cartoons and their success has not gone unnoticed in an industry better used to gambling on hundred million dollar blockbusters.
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