Nearly 10 months after big-wigs like Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Ron Howard announced their elaborate vision for the entertainment portal, and after months of delays, indecision and public speculation over the site's direction (or lack thereof), the company is now in negotiations to fold up into iFilm, another Net start-up, reported ABC online.
Both companies confirm that discussions are taking place, but no deal has been reached. An agreement would potentially merge Pop's hardware and content with iFilm, and could involve laying off as many as 80 of Pop's 90-person staff.
It also could allow Pop's big-name creators to back away from their seemingly doomed Internet venture, and allow iFilm to boost its profile and still keep the moguls involved at a creative level. Since its much-buzzed launch last fall, Pop's site has displayed nothing more than a logo and a press release, but the company, headed by former Disney Imagineering President Kenneth Wong, promised original content created by big stars like Will Smith, Julia Roberts, Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers.
But, much like Digital Entertainment Network's legendary flameout earlier this year, Pop's troubles served as a well-documented example of the difficulties in creating original content for the Web, and how Hollywood has struggled to figure out the Internet. After several delays, the site's founders went public with the admission that they were stumped.
"This is so much harder than anything we imagined," Katzenberg told the Wall Street Journal. "For us, this has been tremendously humbling."
Since then, Pop reportedly approached a handful of other companies for a possible deal, including Z.com and AOL, according to Inside.com. Meanwhile, if the deal goes through, it'll just be the latest company to be swallowed up by iFilm. The site was founded in 1998 and led by CEO Kevin Wendle, a former founder of E! Online who also served as president of CNET. This year, the company has gone on a shopping spree, taking over StudioXchange.com, ScriptShark and Hollywood Creative Directory, among others.
But the big question left for iFilm is whether its folks would be able to do what even Spielberg, Katzenberg, Howard and company couldn't quite pull off: Become a major player on the Internet, and make money doing it-Albawaba.com.
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
