YouTube said it would offer online rentals of nearly 500 Paramount films, including "Hugo" and "The Godfather," rounding out its growing catalog of feature-length movies. Terms of the deal were not disclosed and it was not immediately clear why the two companies, whose parent companies have sparred in court for years, decided to put their differences aside for this licensing agreement.
YouTube, the world's most popular online video website, streams 4 billions videos every day and its users upload more than 60 hours of video to the site every minute. Although much of the content on YouTube consists of home videos that are free to watch, YouTube has increasingly added professionally-produced content, some of it available to rent for a fee. The Paramount deal means that YouTube now has movie rental deals with five of the six major film studios, as well as more than ten independent film studios, giving it access to a catalog of nearly 9,000 films.
Consumers can rent the films, generally for 24 hours or 48 hours, for anywhere from $2.99 to $3.99. The Paramount movies, which include recently releases and classics, will be available over the next few weeks. Consumers can rent the movies on the YouTube website, or on Google Play, Google's online storefront for music, games, movies and othertypes of media.-Reuters
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