YouTube and MGM: A B-movie marriage

The other shoe has dropped in the YouTube.com licensing deal to host feature films. It's a resounding thud: they will post a few archive films from MGM, such as Bulletproof Monk (which had a successful run on the Starz Low Budget Flops network on DISH), The Magnificent Seven (on the HBO Yul Brenner channel) and a few episodes of American Gladiator (the original series -- not the new one).

In a quote buried in the New York Times piece, the MGM co-president Jim Packer announced his enthusiasm for Internet distribution over the viral video service:

We will have some long-form videos up on YouTube, but I don't think that's the platform to have 30 or 40 movies up at once. I feel much more comfortable doing that on a site like Hulu.

Wow, put that in a press release!

The announcement today, which strangely enough has shot up to the number one headline on Techmeme.com, is akin to Comedy Central announcing they will show repeats of Pee-Wee's Playhouse, or maybe Christian Slater making a triumphant return to direct-to-video movies.

MGM, for those who don't know, has struggled to gain an audience for theatrical releases. They started making movies again in 2006 with Lucky Number Slevin and Bobby. Tom Cruise is apparently involved in some way. On the MGM HD channel on DISH, they show one good movie a month. (By the way, if you have not seen the Paul Newman star vehicle Hud, it is worth a subscription alone.)

CNET has called the agreement a "turning point in its relationship with Hollywood." I'm not seeing that, unless by turning point they mean its detrimental. A turning point would have been announcing just one new major theatrical release appearing on the service -- say, The Incredible Hulk or Iron Man. YouTube doesn't need to start hosting an entire library, but just one proof-of-concept for a major DVD release would show whether the feature film format can work. I do like the idea of people commenting on feature films, including discussions about obscure references, other movies they like by the same director, or goof-ups in the film that you can find quickly using a bookmark of some kind.

YouTube has Hulu beat in that regard: they have millions of viewers and many of them are active in the comments section. Hulu is more like a digital theater where you can dim the lights and get serious about your movie.

So, what would it take to get me on board with feature films on YouTube.com? Mike Elgan brought up one interesting trend recently: smartphones that are branded by the Web 2.0 or social net service. If there was a YouTube-branded smartphone that streamed these movies directly to the device, and if it has a screen that's as big as the iPhone or even a pico-projector, I'd be all over it. YouTube also needs to offer some way to transport the films to another device, such as an iPod, and increase the quality dramatically.

For now, the MGM deal is not as much a step toward digital films as proof that this is going to be a long, long journey.