Miramax releases online feature film

Film studio Miramax will release its 1999 feature film, Guinevere, on the Web. Guinevere, a love story starring Stephen Rea, is the first of 12 films to be released online by Miramax, following a partnership in April last year with SightSound.com (www.sightsound.com).

Miramax will release the film on Monday, January 22 as an encrypted file that users will license for 24 hours. Users who attempt to e-mail the file or transfer it to another computer will find the movie unplayable, according to SightSound CEO Scott Sander.

Industry analysts question whether online feature films have an audience. Studio executives and filmmakers meet Friday at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, to consider an August 2000 report by research company Measurecast about Internet viewing trends, which found that only 7 percent of the online population watches streaming media for more than one hour per day.