Disney and Pixar movie rentals coming to iTunes
According to Valleywag, It looks like when Steve Jobs officially introduces movie rentals from iTunes at Macworld in his keynote on January 15, 2008, Disney and Pixar will be joining Fox as studios that will offer rental content.
This isn’t such a surprise since Steve is Disney’s largest single share holder since Disney acquired his Pixar Animation Studios in early 2006.
Steve Jobs owned Pixar?
Yep.
In 1986, Steve bought “The Graphics Group” from LucasFilm’s computer graphics division for $10 million. The studio was later renamed to “Pixar Animation Studios” and moved from Point Richmond, California, to Emeryville, California, where it lives today.
On January 24, 2006, Steve and Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that Disney was acquiring Pixar in an all-stock transaction worth $7.4 billion, giving Steve roughly 7% of Disney’s stock, making him the largest single shareholder. Even Roy E. Disney only has 1%.
Okay, back to the story…
The price of movie rentals is expected to be $2 - $5 (newer and more popular movies are expected to be at the higher end of the scale) and will be good for a 24-hour period, after which DRM will help them expire.
Movie studios NOT expected to join the iTunes rental party are Sony, Universal and Warner Brothers because of “various competitive reasons,” according to Variety.
[Via Gizmodo]
Filed under: entertainment, tech
