New Trimark division will show films on Internet
By Wendy Wilson 8/9/1999
AUG. 9 | Trimark is moving further into video streaming with the formation of subsidiary CinemaNow, which will stream the independent supplier's film catalog over the Internet beginning later this year.
The Trimark catalog includes such titles as Eve's Bayou, Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss and Chinese Box.
The creation of CinemaNow follows Trimark's move earlier this year to license 50 catalog titles to Broadcast.com as part of a $3 million stock swap that gave Broadcast.com a 9% stake in Trimark.
Trimark named Curt Marvis CEO of CinemaNow. He was formerly president of CD-ROM and Internet programming developer 7th Level.
CinemaNow, Marvis said, will position Trimark to take advantage of new entertainment-delivery technologies, such as the Internet. The company expects to begin testing a CinemaNow Web site in mid October. The final site is set to be completed in February and will include an e-commerce element through which visitors will be able to buy videos, DVDs and other licensed products.
The CinemaNow online store will be one of the site's few sources of income initially, because visitors interested in downloading selected titles will not be charged a fee while the company perfects delivery of films over the Internet. Other revenue models being considered for the site include corporate sponsorship of selected films and "rich text" advertisements that would appear strategically on the Web site.
Movies may also be available on a pay-per-view basis in the future, Marvis said.
The 650-title Trimark library will serve as the main source of content at the site initially, but Marvis said the company is "actively and aggressively" talking to other rights holders about streaming their libraries over CinemaNow. Acquisition of independent product made for the site, he added, "may be in tandem" with Trimark's distribution of those titles through other, more traditional avenues.
Marvis said CinemaNow will be "heavily oriented to the college and university crowd" during its first year of operation. Probably 70% of the early users will also be male, he explained, due in part to the fact that Trimark titles have an emphasis on the action and horror genres.
Later in 2000, Marvis said, CinemaNow will begin to market the site to a wider audience. "As the infrastructure is built on the Web to deliver high-speed access, that's when we will start to branch out into the general population."
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