Paramount to open virtual movie vault

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Paramount to open virtual movie vault

The Associated Press Published Thursday, April 3, 2008 9:09AM EDT

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LOS ANGELES - Paramount Pictures' film vault is opening up in the virtual world.

Thousands of video clips from Paramount's movie library -- ranging from "Footloose" to "Clueless" -- will be available inside the virtual 3-D online worlds of There.com and vMTV, Paramount Digital Entertainment and Makena Technologies Inc. announced Wednesday.

"Consumers today are not interested in a passive experience online," Paramount senior vice president of entertainment Derek Broes told The Associated Press. "Even when they are just watching a piece of entertainment, they're commenting on it or looking at it with a friend. They're very actively involved."

There.com and vMTV members will be able to express themselves with seconds-long video clips of movie one liners -- say, Danny Zucko's "Be cool, huh?" from "Grease" -- with the service called VooZoo. The application from Los Angeles-based developer FanRocket was introduced on social-networking site Facebook last month and on mobile devices Tuesday.

The PG-13-or-tamer snippets will cost There.com and vMTV members about $1 and will play in a small window above avatars' heads inside the online realms. In addition to archive footage, Paramount hopes to use the application to virally market upcoming releases, such as "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

The partnership between Paramount, MTV Networks -- both units of Viacom Inc. -- and Makena Technologies, the San Mateo, Calif.-based company behind There.com, marks the first time a movie studio has allowed movie footage to be used inside There.com.

MTV Networks has previously enlisted Makena's There.com technology to create virtual worlds based on MTV shows under the vMTV umbrella, such as "Virtual Hills" and "Virtual Real World Sydney." MTV Networks will begin providing video content for the VooZoo application within the next few months.

Broes wouldn't release numbers on how many people have used VooZoo since the application launched on Facebook last month, but he said there are plans to bring the VooZoo service to Windows Live Messenger.