Amazon.com expands into film business

Amazon.com expands into film business

Amazon.com has formed Amazon Studios, a business unit that would grant $2.7 million annually to filmmakers to assist them in making movies for major Hollywood studios. The announcement by the Seattle-based online retailer was made on Tuesday.

Amazon Studios would let aspiring filmmakers submit movie ideas and stories to their site where users can review the projects and submit their own versions. The premise is that the ideas of many people would be a good gauge for the commercial success of a prospective film. If the film idea or script is supported by many users, then a studio would not be afraid to commit to developing the movie.

The initial project would be made in collaboration with Warner Bros. If the “first-look” deal is successful, then Amazon plans to talk to other film studios for future projects.

Until the creation of Amazon Studios, Amazon’s relationship with Hollywood has been limited to selling films online through downloads. But rivals such as Netflix and YouTube have undermined that part of the business. Amazon hopes that its foray into filmmaking would get it more opportunities from Hollywood.

Amazon has also offered its e-book Digital Text service for writers to help them upload and market manuscripts that can be accessed via the company’s Kindle e-readers.  A hit manuscript has already been tapped for a film project.

Amazon will start to grant the awards to the winning filmmakers in February. Producer Mark Gill and scriptwriter Jack Epps Jr. (The Mask, Top Gun) will be two of the panelists.

Posted by Kade Quinn on Wednesday November 17 2010, 4:32 AM EST. Ref: Wall Street Journal. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Entertainment, Featured News. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0