Prima Cinema, a new start-up, wants to bring movies to your home movie theater the day that movie launches in theaters, but it won’t be cheap.
The company will charge a one-time $20,000 fee to install the digital-delivery system, and each new movie will cost $500.
Prima says it has $5 million in venture capital from Universal and Best Buy and hopes to begin delivering movies to customers in the Q4 2011.
The company has high expectations, as well. Prima wants to install the delivery system in 250,000 homes by 2015, however, executives in Hollywood seem to see that number as a lot lower.
Other execs see it differently: “While this is a niche market, there is a chance for significant upside,” says Adam Fogelson, chairman of Universal Pictures (via WSJ). “And precisely because it is a niche market, that upside should come without harming any of our existing partners or revenue streams.”
Prima CEO Jason Pang adds: “We’re not here to replace anything. We are trying to create new revenue streams for studios and new viewing opportunities for moviegoers.”
The movie delivery company has not yet signed on with any studios, but is actively in talks with all the majors and major independents.
Result for: theaters
According to security company McAfee, actress Cameron Diaz is used most often as malware bait, with search strings using her name having a ten percent chance of coming up with an infected site.
Dave Marcus, McAfee’s director of security research and communication says searching for “Cameron Diaz and screensavers” increases that rate to 20 percent.
McAfee, as it has done since 2007, compiled the search phrases containing names of celebrities, athletes and politicians trying to calculate the percentage of sites that are tagged as dangerous.
Diaz surpassed Jessica Biel, last year’s “champion,” who fell to third place. Julia Roberts took second, while Gisele Buendchen and Brad Pitt rounding out the list.
“It’s a simple fact. The bad guys read the same news as the good guys,” said Marcus.
Marcus also explained why Diaz jumped so high, as the McAfee list was composed during the month where two of her films were in theaters, “Knight and Day” and “Shrek Forever After.”
Phishers and attackers use the names to trick unsuspecting users into visiting malicious sites, which then installs malware on their computers.
Result for: theaters
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has announced the shut down of nine movie piracy sites, the first sites in a major crackdown from federal officials.
The anti-piracy initiative is dubbed “Operation in Our Sites,” and is aimed at taking down sites that stream or offer downloads of films that are currently in theaters.
Movies-links.TV, nowmovies.com, thepiratecity.org, filespump.com, planetmoviez.com, zml.org, tvshack.net, ninjavideo.net and thisninja.net were all taken down.
Each site generated revenue from ads and some accept donations. All assets from the sites were seized, including PayPal and advertising accounts.
ICE president John Morton says the amount of illegal movie sites is rising rapidly, with organized crime behind a number of the bigger sites.
Morton added that the sites taken down combined for “millions and millions of hits on a monthly basis.”
