Fast Forward

At the Sundance Film Festival this last weekend, a forum of online film execs like Suzie Reider (CMO, YouTube) and Steve Starr (CEO, Revver) debated the role of the web as profitable distribution for short and feature films. Thanks to sites for emerging media, films are exposed to new audiences and/or revenues. CNET.com carried the story, “The Web, where filmmakers are also producers.”

Some predicted Hollywood blockbusters might one day première online. Others see the Web primarily as place for marketing films and doubt it will ever become a viable revenue-generating distribution tool.

But on this, they all agreed: we’re only in nascent stages of an unstoppable media revolution–or at least a media “evolution,” as moderator Kara Swisher of The Wall Street Journal put it–fueled by better broadband access, emerging tools and gadgets, and sites that build communities and identity.

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Swisher suggested that it might just take someone like George Lucas distributing a film over the Internet–and making big money off it–in order take online distribution to the next level.

(via Mickipedia)