Video NewsBriefs

According to a survey of 753 Internet-­using adults conducted by the Pew Internet Project during a three-day period in June 2009, 69 percent of adult Internet users watch streaming or downloaded videos online. Since 2007, the study reports, viewership of educational online videos has risen by 16 percent, to 38 percent of adult Internet users. Younger Internet users ages 18–29 continue to be the heaviest consumers of online video, followed by adult men, the wealthy, and the well educated. More info at pewinternet.org.

The DreamWorks film adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel, The Help (2009), directed by Tate Taylor and starring Emma Stone as Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, Viola Davis as Abileen, and Octavia Spencer as Mimi, is currently in production in Greenwood, MS. The Penguin Audio and Books on Tape editions of The Help, read by Spencer, Bahni Turpin, Janna Lamia, and Cassandra Campbell, was an LJ Best Audiobook of 2009 and won two Audie Awards, for Fiction and Distinguished Achievement in Production. The Amy Einhorn Bks: Putnam hardcover received a starred review (LJ 1/09) and was an LJ Best Seller. The Help is also available as an ebook; no paperback release has been scheduled.

Fangoria magazine has launched, together with film producer/distributor Lightning Media, a multitiered distribution program featuring eight horror titles to be collectively marketed as part of Fangoria FrightFest, a “mini” film festival competition. The winning film, to be determined by public online vote through July 19, will receive a limited theatrical release in late July. The contenders are Jaume Balagueró’s Fragile, Michael Staininger’s The Tomb, Martin Weisz’s Grimm Love, Dean Francis’s Road Kill, Darin Scott’s Dark House, Steven Hentges’s Hunger, James Isaac’s Pig Hunt, and Elio Quiroga’s The Haunting.

At the Wall Street Journal’s 2010 D: All Things Digital conference (aka D8), Avatar director James Cameron revealed plans for a 3-D version of Titanic (1997). Titanic won 11 Academy Awards and was the first film ever to rake in more than $1 billion worldwide; its soundtrack recording is the best-selling instrumental movie soundtrack of all time; and the 1997 Harper Perennial paperback on the making of the film, James Cameron’s Titanic, was the first movie tie-in book ever to become a No. 1 New York Times best seller. The 3-D version of Titanic is scheduled for theatrical release in 2012, to coincide with the centennial of the sinking of the real ship.