Studios Tempting Audiences With Online Outtakes

I had wondered how that awesome "Brokeback Mountain" outtake from Knocked Up had made its way onto YouTube. Well, it seems that the studio okayed it to be there. As the WSJ reports today, Universal has put several deleted scenes of the comedy online, and since then, they've racked up more than a million viewing on the movie's official website and YouTube (that "Brokeback"clip that I posted last week, for example, has been viewed around 500,000 times). In the past, these kind of outtakes used to be reserved for DVD extras, but now the studios are putting the scenes online earlier, to create viral campaigns and spread word of mouth about the movie while its still in theaters. New Line is planning to do something similar for the upcoming Rush Hour 3 (you can already find a clip from the movie on YouTube...it's embedded below) and Sony is considering posting deleted scenes from their August comedy Superbad, which is written by Knocked Up's Seth Rogen (he's also in it). It's a balancing act thought, because they still want to hold something special back for the DVD. But as we've seen lately, with the home video market plateauing, studios are becoming more aggressive about new distribution strategies. And I have to hand it to the studios for being increasingly proactive online with their film fans. Remember the video interviews Warner Bros. posted with Emile Hirsch and Christina Ricci days after they were cast in Speed Racer? Not only are they giving people what they want to watch online, they've figured out how to benefit from it.