By Deborah Yao, Business Writer
PHILADELPHIA (AP) --Comcast Corp. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. said Tuesday they are teaming up to introduce a video-on-demand channel featuring action movies and TV shows.
Comcast, the country’s largest cable operator, already has a hit with another genre-specific VOD channel and Web site, FEARnet, which features horror movies and thrillers, in collaboration with Lionsgate and Sony Pictures Television. FEARnet is also available on mobile phones.
Philadelphia-based Comcast said the “Impact” channel will have 25 to 30 titles every month – and about 200 a year. But it will tap into MGM’s library of over 1,000 action movies and TV shows, including many in high-definition format.
Movies include those in the James Bond franchise, Rocky and RoboCop. Programming will be grouped into categories such as thrillers, crime, war films, martial arts, westerns and espionage. Most movies will be free.
MGM said titles will have similar timing as those released on other pay-TV providers, which means they will come after DVD rentals.
Programming is slated to appeal to the demographic of men aged 18 to 49, and the channel will be partly supported by advertising, the companies said. A Web site is under development.
The channel is being rolled out market-by-market this week to Comcast customers. Los Angeles-based MGM said it is in talks with other pay-TV providers for carriage.
Last month, Comcast announced a deal with Time Warner Cable Inc. to carry FEARnet. Comcast gets licensing fees as well as advertising revenue for the channel. The nearly two-year-old channel is already available through cable operators Cox Communications Inc. and Insight Communications Co. as well as Verizon Communications Inc.’s FiOS service.
In the first quarter of 2008, FEARnet video on demand views were up 40 percent from a year ago. In June, PC Magazine named the FEARnet Web site among the best for movie fans.
Comcast owns 20 percent of privately held MGM.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More