Moviebeam, the doomed movie delivery service from Disney, is being revived again, and has been recapitalized in a series E funding round, according to an SEC filing. The amount: $52.5 million, and the funders: Mayfield, Norwest Venture Partners, Intel Capital, Cisco, Vantage Point Venture Partners and ABC. Disney’s ABC television will still be the biggest shareholder, though a minority interest.
Board member now include Kevin Fong of Mayfield, Salil Mehta, exec. VP of ESPN Enterprises, one of the original Disney executives involved in Moviebeam, and Alex Izzard, also a former Disney-MovieBeam exec. Alex will also be the CEO of the new Moviebeam.
This means that Disney has essentially sold off the assets (the company is now called Moviebeam Inc) and had retained a minority interest. I’m assuming the backers bought it for its delivery technology (datacasting, from Dotcast) and assets, not for the domain name…that would be too high a price.
The movie-on-demand service was started with much fanfare in three cities in 2004. But it didn’t work, for various reasons, and the company closed down the service in April last year. Disney had $24 million of impairment charges during Q3 2005, and a $32 million write-down of its investment in Dotcast, the company it invested in for the technology.
Updated 1: A Moviebeam spokesperson told us that they have nothing more to add to the filing…the company has indeed been spun out of Disney.
Related:
– Disney Looking To Sell Off Moviebeam Assets
– Disney To Close MovieBeam in 3 Cities
– Disney Delays MovieBeam Expansion
– Disney’s Moviebeam Investment Reaching $70 Million Mark
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