Morgan Freeman Releases New Movie on Web

Academy Award winning actors Jack Nicholson, left, and Morgan Freeman are seated courtside during the Los Angeles Lakers basketball game against Milwaukee Bucks at the Staples Center in Los Angeles Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian) (Kevork Djansezian - AP)

Freeman and his production partner, Lori McCreary, founded Revelations Entertainment in 1996 _ three years after Freeman's lone directing effort, "Bopha!"

"I want to have control over making films. I really do," says Freeman.

After Napster and online downloading changed the music industry, Freeman and McCreary began considering how Hollywood could head off similar problems _ discussions that Intel eventually joined.

"And we came up with the idea of distributing movies via the Internet on a stable platform, on something that you can control," Freeman says.

The idea isn't new; Movielink.com, for one, offers movies digitally for purchase and rental (with a viewing period of 24 hours). What makes Clickstar unique is that it's offering first-run movies.

"10 Items or Less" will have a two-week window of a purely theatrical release, then will be available from ClickstarInc.com on Dec. 15. Freeman says its next first-run digital release will be "Lonely Hearts" (starring John Travolta and James Gandolfini) in the spring.

Other filmmakers have begun to re-examine how they release their films. Last year, Steven Soderbergh released the indie "Bubble" across three platforms over just five days: in theaters, on the high-definition cable channel HDNet and on DVD.

Freeman, however, thinks the risk of piracy with DVDs is too great (especially in foreign countries) and that coded downloads present a safer avenue for distribution. It also helps level the playing field between independent productions and the studios.

"You can come up with money sometimes to make a film, but you can't distribute it because it costs a lot to get prints and advertising," Freeman says.

The obvious fear is that digital downloads made available so close to the theatrical release could cannibalize the box office.

Silberling, whose credits include wide-release films such as "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" and "Moonlight Mile," thinks the Internet simply presents another audience to penetrate.

"I don't think broadband is going to shift viewing patterns," the director says. "I think hopefully people who otherwise wouldn't have seen it might now. People who like to go to that theater and get popcorn will go."

Both Freeman and Silberling think Hollywood doomsayers will be proven wrong on Internet distribution in the same way that fears of TV, the VHS and DVDs all (to a certain extent) turned out to be exaggerated. They believe digital downloads present the future of home entertainment and expect it to spread prominently within a few years.

But concerns about the unknown don't bother Freeman much. He recently took up golf, and to hear him speak about it, he might just as well be discussing Clickstar.

"I'm enjoying the attempt," he says with a laugh. "I'm trying to master a new discipline, which I guess is something we should all do, anyway."

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On the Net:

http://www.clickstarinc.com/