CinemaNow to Webcast Lions Gate Films

Trimark Pictures, owner of the online film distribution and chat site CinemaNow, is about to be acquired by Lions Gate, based in Toronto. Lions Gate is the producer of such recent films as “American Psycho” and “Affliction.” CinemaNow, based in Marina del Rey, said it had struck a deal giving it the rights to distribute on the Web an undetermined number of films from Lions Gate’s library. The timing of such distribution and its coordination with normal pay-per-view, video and DVD “windows” still has to be worked out, said CinemaNow’s CEO Curt Marvis, as do the costs and terms for consumers. CinemaNow does plan to try a pilot pay-per-view Webcasting of an unspecified Australian feature film within the next 30 to 60 days, he said. Marvis acknowledged that “streaming” feature films to consumers is not yet practical, given the slowness of most users’ Web connections and troubling issues relating to security, but he believes the Internet will eventually prove its value as a way to order and view films. “There aren’t huge, huge opportunities at this moment in time,” he said, “but it’s going to happen quickly.”