M+E Daily

In another sign of Hollywood’s bracing for the post-disc era, DreamWorks Animation is partnering with Technicolor to launch a cloud-based movie store and discovery service in the fourth quarter. Called M-Go, the service will offer movies and TV content for sale or rental and will be accessible from any connected device via app.

M-Go will launch with movies from the five UltraViolet studios — Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Sony Pictures and NBC Universal — and the service will be compatible with the UltraViolet rights locker platform. As with UV, Disney is not yet participating in M-Go. Movies will be available day-and-date with the release on DVD and Blu-ray; selected TV shows will be available as early as one day after their original airing. Prices will be comparable with competing platforms the companies said.

The joint venture is being headed by CEO John Batter, who stepped down as head of production at DWA last year.

“When I was at DreamWorks we spent a lot of time thinking about how we can we help mass-market consumers make the transition from physical to digital consumption,” Batter told Daily Variety. “We were watching our DVD numbers go down and our hypothesis was that services and stores in the market were not properly constructed in a way that was getting consumers to move to digital.”

The M-Go app will be available on iOS, Android and Windows mobile devices, and will be embedded on connected TVs, Blu-ray Disc players and other devices from Samsung, Vizio and Intel.

M-Go will be the second major VOD initiative from the major studios to roll out this fall. Last week, Fox announced it will begin making movies available for electronic sell-through three weeks ahead of their release on DVD and Blu-ray, under a new format heading it calls “DHD,” for Digital HD.

For all its studio fire power, M-Go will be competing with several existing EST and VOD services, including Apple’s iTunes, Amazon Instant Video and Walmart’s Vudu service. Unlike many of those other services, however, M-Go is not associated with a proprietary technology platform, giving it the potential at least to become a truly ubiquitous, cross-platform transactional movie and TV service — much as Netflix has managed to achieve for subscription rentals.

The service is being powered by Technicolor, which built the back-end for LoveFilm in the U.K. and has experience integrated content delivery with multiple technology platforms.