That almost sounds like a con line from Bowfinger itself. But if Grazer's only half right, it means the Web may finally become a font of high-quality entertainment instead of a wasteland of hack-movie promotion. And that possibility has the existing short-film sites entertaining visions of morphing into full-fledged movie studios. AtomFilms bought a production house last month. MediaTrip.com scored the acclaimed George Lucas in Love by helping pay postproduction costs. And Reelshort.com is partnering with indie film company Angelika Entertainment Corp. to fund the creation of shorts. "We're looking to bang these things out once a week," says Reelshort founder and CEO Jeremy Bernard.

For now, the TV networks and film studios will continue to pluck the best of the talent discovered on the Net. But, as Warren Littlefield says, "a lot of the major power brokers in Hollywood have been coming late to the game." That means the opportunity remains—even before the high-speed Internet big bang arrives in the next decade--for the Web to become a medium as important to the industry as film or TV. And that means that Katzenberg's hyperbole about "a new form of entertainment" may not be so far-out after all.

Originally posted Dec 17, 1999 Published in issue #517 Dec 17, 1999 Order article reprints
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