The New York Times’ David Halbfinger has this piece today about how one of Hollywood’s top talent agencies, United Talent Agency, has formed a new unit to scour the web for new stars. But there’s an interesting twist: the new group is not only looking to find talent it can pluck from the web and use in other media, such as TV and movies, but it is also looking for talent it can use for other web sites.
The goal this time around, executives say, is not only to recruit the next generation of television and film writers and directors from the relative obscurity of sites like YouTube and Revver. It is also to help the major Web portals that are hungry for original content to find the creative people they need — just as movie studios have long turned to talent agencies when looking for new directors, screenwriters and actors.
The three 26 year-old agents that form the new unit at United Talent have already cut six-figure deal with a major media portals and have already signed videobloggers, online film auteurs and other creative content developers to sell their wares to big online companies.
And the traditional objective of converting these online stars into TV or movie writers, directors and actors is receding.
United Talent, by contrast, is taking the risk that relatively small deals today will quickly grow in size and scope, and it is banking on the notion that artists surfacing on the Internet may often be quite content to have successful careers that do not make the leap to TV or film.
“In the old days, i.e., two months ago, it was about signing up those clients and immediately figuring out how to flip them into traditional media,” Mr. Weinstein {Brent Weinstein, head of the new division, UTA Online] said. “Now we can look at an artist and say, that might be a goal, but in the interim, or while we’re doing that, or instead of that, how can we monetize their interests online?”
Cynthia Brumfield at 8:16 AM|Comments(0)
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