MovieClips.com Partners with YouTube, Aims to Be the Next Vevo
Today is a big day in MovieClips.com's history, because the two-year old company has just signed a deal with YouTube to bring the site's 20,000 film clip library to the leading video-sharing site.
MovieClips.com has partnerships with all the major studios (except Disney) to turn scenes from their movies into bite-sized, sharable online clips. The company began two years ago, and has so far spent $5 million on business development. It has meticulously combed the fan forums and quote lists to find the movie lines that people want to see again and again, says the company's co-founder Zach James, and it's turned those scenes into clips.
The company's goal is to succeed with movie clips in the same way that Vevo succeeded with music videos. That's why it's following Vevo's lead onto YouTube.
'We always wanted to strike this deal with YouTube," James says.
There are already pirated clips of the same scenes getting hundreds of millions of views per month, James says. He wants the MovieClips.com name to become synonymous with quality in the same way that Vevo has. When viewers see that a clip is from his company, he wants them to know that it's high quality and not pirated.
"Every time you see the Vevo name, you know it'll be HD, it'll be in really good quality," says James. "We hope to stop piracy by offering an alternative that's really high quality."
At the moment, only around half of the company's library is on YouTube. Uploading that many clips takes time. James expect the process to take another month. By that time, there will be more clips to upload. The company is constantly licensing new content, James says, and he hope to have the library up to 100,000 clips, which will include red carpet events and interviews, in the near future.
MovieClips.com is offering more than just clips on YouTube: it has wisely turned its library into interactive games, such as one that asks viewers to guess the next line from a famous scene.
Along with the YouTube announcement, MovieClips.com is announcing that it has raised $7 million in Series B funding. The round was led by MK Capital, with contributions from previous investors Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital, SoftTech, and Richmond Park Partners, as well as angel investors including Allen DeBevoise, the CEO of Machinima
James says the company will use that money to hire additional staff, and to create movie clip-related mobile apps. Look for them to show up in around six months.
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