The Wrap: YouTube about to launch large scale VoD service

The post-easter air is rife with speculation. According to Hollywood news outlet The Wrap, Google is about to announce that Google will launch a service that will enable people paid-for streaming of thousands of new and older movies via its video platform YouTube.

That YouTube offers streaming access to feature films is nothing new. It already does so. What is new, however, is the scale of the service that Google would announce this or next week. According to sources close to the video-on-demand service, Google has closed deals with large studios like Universal, Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures and also with indie producers like Lionsgate and Kino Lorber. So far, insiders say, Google has failed to convince Paramount, Fox and Disney to join.

The participating studios have great expectations of the deals. “We are pretty excited because we are happy to see new entrants come in transactionally rather than a subscription model,” says a studio executive. “We think it will start with VoD, but broaden to include sell-through over time.”

In the recent past, Google has also hinted on developing YouTube to include a movie sales channel.

The movies will be available via YouTube at the same time they are published on DVD or other movie streaming services. It is not yet clear how much streaming a movie would cost.

But for a sstatement that YouTube has been offering paid access to movie streams for a year now and that over a thousand movies are on offer already, Google is keeping shtum about the new service,

Source: The Wrap