Clip it: Paramount Cashes In

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If you’re the type of person who thinks clips from Mission: Impossible might help you sell your new line of organic doggie pajamas, well, isn’t this just your lucky day.

Paramount Pictures is now peddling movie clips to businesses through a new site, ParamountClips.com, which allows users to search through the Paramount Vault and not only purchase clips, but customize them. (Yeah, pretty cool.) Initially the search will include 80 films, but The New York Times says that the goal will extend the search out to 1,000 clippable movies. (Me, I’m crossing my fingers for the addition of Get Rich or Die Tryin’.)

Though the self-checkout lane of acquiring the rights to film snippets for commercial use is neat, I’m wondering if something like this has a major profit cap. Every now and then a major ad campaign will appeal to its audience through Alicia Silverstone’s Cher from Clueless or Tom Hanks’ Forrest from Forrest Gump, but why pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for thirty seconds of box-of-chocolate-philosophy when you can practically rent out-of-work reality stars for free? Nothing says “L’Eggo My Eggo” like that one guy from the Real World.

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