YouTube does deal with Lionsgate Official clips to air on site accompanied by ads

17 July 2008 9:13 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

YouTube has announced a revenue-sharing deal to feature official film clips from Lionsgate Entertainment Inc.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced the deal at an advertising event, saying it would give viewers access to scenes from Lionsgate movies - accompanied by ads.

"Lionsgate is the next interesting example of (a company) trying to get the people who are fans on the internet and monetize it", Schmidt said.

"There are things in our library like 'Dirty Dancing' that have been watched tens of millions of times and it will be nice to get paid for that and to set viewers in the direction of buying movies", Lionsgate vice chairman Michael Burns said.

The new Lionsgate-branded channel will launch in the near future, in the mean time Google is still embroiled in a $1 billion lawsuit with Viacom about unauthorised clips on the site.