Paramount’s new division for micro-budget films: 10 films $100,000 each first year. http://bit.ly/dbL1ON

Do they have Paranormal Activity envy?

“Aren’t you tired of being fed the same movies wrapped in different paper?” asks the Insurge website, “We want to find and distribute crazy, unpredictable, and hopefully awesome movies – movies that make you want to line up to see at your local theater with all your friends (and us).  Movies that a big studio would never release because they’re too risky, too silly, and they don’t star Sandra Bullock.”

Is a google set top box the “wave of the future”? http://bit.ly/bqezPS Lots of opinions from fairly positive to “never going to happen”.

I’m biased as that type of index is exactly the vision we had for Open TV Network and Google faces the might of entrenched players, competing set-top boxes and very little reason for established players to cede the set top box away from themselves to Google.

If anyone an do it, it might be Google, but I’m with the naysayers on this one.

Futures trading for Film Profits http://bit.ly/bReQud This can’t end well. “Insider trading seems like it would be a non-trivial issue”

I think this is a very bad idea. The ‘wisdom of the crowds’ is no more likely to get it right than the “experts” – and the example on predicting revenue for Alice in Wonderland proves that point. Insider trading is going to be a huge problem.

But really, gambling on predicting the revenue of a film is what the studio has already done. Why is there a need for an exchange so that all and sundry and lose their shirts?