It isn’t just for promoting films anymore; News Corp and Fox Interactive Media plan to offer movie downloads on its websites like MySpace and IGN.
At first, the movies will be available on the Direct2Drive website, a part of IGN where games like World of Warcraft can be purchased for download. Fox Interactive Media president Ross Levinsohn said in a Reuters report that online sales of films and TV shows on Direct2Drive would begin by October of this year.
Fox will capitalize on the popularity of properties like “X-Men” and “24” to entice downloaders to purchase content directly. Although the move effectively cuts out the middleman and all of the profits stay in-house with Fox, Levinsohn has to take care not to anger the particularly muscular middleman called Wal-Mart. The massive retailer sells plenty of DVDs and won’t like seeing a swath of its business cut out with online sales.
Content sold through Direct2Drive, and then on MySpace, would become available the same day as the retail DVD release. They plan to price movies at $20, a little over the typical in-store price Wal-Mart charges for typical new releases.
News Corp has moved from standing still to running hard at all of the entrenched online players to make its mark on the Internet. Fox Interactive Media has only taken form in the past year, but plenty of Rupert Murdoch’s money has served to bulk up the number of properties Levinsohn has at his disposal.
Yahoo CEO Terry Semel paid Murdoch respect in a CNNMoney.com interview, where he said of News Corp’s patriarch, “There’s nothing he can’t do. He’s a visionary and a guy who takes risks.”
There even exists the possibility that Fox and Direct2Drive could serve as the platform of choice for other Hollywood moguls. That would certainly fall in line with the highly-competitive News Corp mindset.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
