Press Releases
YouTube And The Weinstein Company Premiere First Eight Minutes Of Lucky Number Slevin To Promote New Film
SAN MATEO, Calif and NEW YORK, NY – April 21, 2006 – YouTube, a consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, is working with The Weinstein Company (TWC) to feature the first eight minutes of its thriller "Lucky Number Slevin," which is in theaters nationwide and stars Josh Hartnett, Morgan Freeman, Lucy Liu and Bruce Willis. TWC is offering YouTube users an exclusive first glance of the first eight minutes of the movie on the web. This marks the first time that the opening of a feature film will be released specifically for the YouTube audience.
Executive vice president of The Weinstein Company Gary Faber stated, "Audiences love the opening of LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN – the twists and turns, all set up in this eight minute opening are one of the major reasons why word-of-mouth on the film has been so overwhelmingly positive. Deciding to partner with YouTube was a no-brainer – what better way to help fuel the film's positive buzz than by partnering with the number one word-of-mouth website out there today."
"Bringing more entertaining and exclusive content to YouTube helps further our goal of providing the best video experience on the Internet," said Kevin Donahue, vice president of programming at YouTube. "The Weinstein Company is one of the most progressive movie studios moving beyond traditional means to promote its films with original video programming on YouTube."
Lucky Number Slevin is a thriller that moves its way through an underworld of crime and revenge where nothing is as it seems. Set in New York City, a case of mistaken identity lands Slevin (Josh Hartnett) into the middle of a war being plotted by two of the city's most rival crime bosses: The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley) and The Boss (Morgan Freeman). Slevin is under constant surveillance by relentless Detective Brikowski (Stanley Tucci) as well as the infamous assassin Goodkat (Bruce Willis) and finds himself having to hatch his own ingenious plot to escape the maze alive. Also starring Lucy Liu, LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN is directed by Paul McGuigan and written by Jason Smilovic. LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN is a MGM release of a TWC presention.
In addition to Lucky Number Slevin, Deep Focus, the advertising agency for TWC, has reached YouTube's audience to promote recent films by posting trailers for Scary Movie 4, which has been viewed nearly 1.5M times on YouTube, and CLERKS II, which is gaining steam with more than 200,000 video views on the site.
"Prior to YouTube, there was no other way to premiere the first few minutes of a movie in a viral way," said Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus. "With help from the YouTube community, Scary Movie 4 had a record-breaking box office release. With the upcoming release of CLERKS II and with Lucky Number Sleven in theaters nationwide, we are excited to continue to find cool, new ways to bring our movies to market."
To view previews of Weinstein Company/ Dimension films on YouTube visit:
- Premiere of Lucky Number Sleven – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H02bAzgVC0
- Official Scary Movie 4 Trailer – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0zAlXr1UOs
- Official CLERKS II Trailer – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLvhJ0m5ask
- Exclusive "Making of" Intro by Kevin Smith – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCW244Uu7vQ
About YouTube
Founded in February 2005, YouTube is a consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the Internet through websites, blogs, and e-mail. The company currently delivers more than 40 million video views every day with 35,000 new videos uploaded daily. With investment support from Sequoia Capital, YouTube has quickly become the leading destination on the Internet for video entertainment.
Copyright © 2006 YouTube, Inc.
