Movie fans and film buffs, cross your fingers, toes and eyes: YouTube is in talks with Hollywood studios to bring full-length movies to a computer screen near you. The only catch? You’ll have to pay for them.
It’s Google’s latest ploy to make YouTube profitable, according to the Wall Street Journal, but would let wide-eyed YouTubers lap up all the latest flicks, in addition to some older films which are already available for free.
Lionsgate Entertainment, Sony and Warner Brothers are reportedly in talks to provide the latest releases, and while it’s still strictly hush hush the video site has commented that it “hope[s] to expand both on our great relationships with movie studios and on the selection and types of videos we offer our community.”
Those close to YouTube’s negotiations claim the video site is keen to carry the latest films, with the proviso that it gets access to them as close as possible to their release on DVD.
It wouldn’t be a huge stretch for Google-owned YouTube to begin offering a fully-fledged movie service. In the past it charged for video rentals and downloads through Google Video, but stopped shortly after aquiring YouTube. Since then it has toyed with video downloads from YouTube, as well as streaming movies for free.
