Cinematical

Though he was hanging around ClickStar's press events as long ago as January, Danny DeVito has just now signed a deal with the company to create a documentary-only broadband channel called Jersey Docs. As Karina told us at the beginning of the year, ClickStar is a Morgan Freeman-Intel collaboration, dedicated to making "new...films available for download before (or, instead of) premiering in theaters." In the case of DeVito's project, since his goal is to make documentaries that fail to score distribution available to to the general public, it's going to be primarily instead of, though he does hope to offer a few titles after their theatrical runs, as well.

Starting this fall, the films chosen (DeVito will "provide artistic direction") by the Jersey Docs team will be available for download to either rent or own, depending on individual licensing agreements, for an as-yet undermined price. Interestingly, DeVito emphasized that the venture has goals beyond altruism, saying "It's not just a labor of love -- ClickStar will be making money for the filmmakers and for themselves." Clearly, his hope is that filmmakers will start to see Jersey Docs as a plausible first option in terms of exposure and profits, rather than a fall-back choice should distribution not work out.