Morgan Freeman's Revelations Entertainment forms new venture with Intel

Morgan Freeman's movie production company, Revelations Entertainment and chip making giant Intel Corp., said Wednesday that they have formed a new venture to distribute premium movies to consumers over the Internet.

The announcement was made at an annual retreat for chief executives of top media companies at a Sun Valley mountain resort.

Intel will invest an unspecified amount of money in the new venture to be called ClickStar Inc., which was formed by Revelations Entertainment, a company Freeman created in 1996 with producer Lori McCreary.

Movie Studios have been reluctant to offer digitized movies directly to consumers over the Internet, fearful of suffering a similar fate as the music industry, which has been hit hard by piracy.

Freeman said his deal with Intel should avoid those pitfalls by giving customers a "simple, easy and attractive" alternative to piracy. Like Apple Computer’s iTunes has done with music.

Intel and Revelations said that consumers have shown they want to download films earlier and that traditional DVD releases aren't meeting that demand.

"We're going to bypass what the music industry had to come up with, and that's to get ahead of the whole piracy thing," Freeman told reporters.

Intel spokesman Bill Calder said Intel had been working for several years with Freeman, setting up "digital home" technology in his studio and doing a long-range wireless demo at the Sundance film festival.

ClickStar will be headed by former Sony Pictures executive Nizar Allibhoy. The new service is expected to launch in early 2006, using Microsoft Windows Media technology and digital rights management.