Amazon Enters Movie Business

SEATTLE: Amazon.com has set up a business that will focus on discovering new talent and developing feature films, with a first-look deal in place with Warner Bros. Pictures.

Amazon Studios is inviting filmmakers and screenwriters around the world to submit full-length test movies and scripts. Amazon Studios will offer a total of $2.7 million to the top submissions received by December 31, 2011, including prizes for the 2011 Annual Awards, with $100,000 for the best script and $1 million for the best movie, and monthly awards of $100,000 for best test movie and $20,000 for best script. The best projects will be developed into features for commercial release. Warner Bros. Pictures will have first access to the projects Amazon Studios wishes to produce in cooperation with an outside studio. (If Warner Bros. Pictures passes, Amazon can take the selected project to another studio.) If a feature is released, the individual who submitted the script or test movie will receive a rights payment of $200,000; if the movie makes over $60 million at the U.S. box office, the original filmmaker or screenwriter will receive a $400,000 bonus.

“We are excited to introduce writers, filmmakers and movie lovers to Amazon Studios,” said Roy Price, director of digital product development at Amazon. "Full-length test movies will show stories up on their feet and attract helpful feedback at an early stage. We hope that Amazon Studios will help filmmakers experiment and collaborate and we look forward to developing hit movies.”

Winning screenplays and full-length test movies will be selected on the basis of commercial viability. Industry panelists who will assess the projects include Jack Epps, Jr., screenwriter and chair of the writing division at the USC School of Cinematic Arts; producer Mark Gill, a former president of Miramax and Warner Independent Pictures; screenwriter Mike Werb; and Michael Taylor, producer and chair of the production division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts.