Miramax Makes Film Deal With Facebook

Miramax announced today on their blog that it is partnering with Facebook to launch Miramax Experience, an app that will allow users worldwide to watch movie clips and feature-length films from the studio. It is the most ambitious move yet for a Hollywood studio on Facebook. At the start, the beta app offers rental video-on-demand for 30 Facebook credits ($3), but Miramax said it plans to eventually sell films to store digitally so buyers can play them on any device. (Currently, 20 films are on offer from the studio library, including Chicago, Gangs of New York, Good Will Hunting and Pulp Fiction.) The studio, which partnered with Ooyala and AllDigital to build the app in eight weeks, said that more than 50 million Facebook users currently mention a Miramax film in their profile, interact with the Miramax page or like the fan pages of Miramax titles and talent.

Having been built in just eight weeks, the app is still in a beta version and Lang wrote that the "ultimate goal is to give consumers the opportunity to buy films and store them in their own cloud-based digital locker — to then access the content anywhere they want, across ALL devices.  Yes, that’s right — any PC, smartphone, tablet or TV, whether at home, on the go, on vacation, etc."

Offering up movies via Facebook is becoming a trend. Last week, Universal said it would offer the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowski as its first rental in its Social Theater app. In March, Warner Bros also began offering movies, including The Dark Knight, a pair of Harry Potter films and Inception. So far, all of the offerings are available for a 48-hour window for $3.

I think this could catch on like wildfire! What do you all think?