America Online Inc. Thursday enlisted Big Entertainment in its
yet-to-be-launched Latin America service.
Translated versions of movie
site Hollywood.com and online movie
store bigE.com will be rolled out across the
Latin American AOL Network.
Hollywood.com will become an AOL anchor site in the region, while bigE.com
will be rolled out across the Latin American version of the recently
developed Shop@AOL service.
Under the terms of the agreement, AOL Latin America will take a minority
stake in Big Entertainment. The deal will also mark the entry of Hollywood.com and bigE.com into the
Latin America.
AOL Latin America will begin to roll out it services by the end of the
year, with AOL Brazil as the first service on the slate.
The two services’ content will be provided in Portuguese for AOL Brazil,
and in Spanish for launches planned first in Mexico and Argentina.
“Big Entertainment expects explosive growth of its Hollywood.com brand as a
result of our partnership with AOL Latin America,” said Mitchell
Rubenstein, chief executive officer of BigE. “We look forward to joining forces with AOL Latin
America to bring the best of ‘Hollywood’ to Brazil and throughout Latin
America.”
AOL Latin America, a joint venture between AOL and the
Cisneros Group, was formed in December 1998. The joint
venture will also bring CompuServe to the Latin American market.
After losing a Brazilian court battle over its domain name of choice, AOL
Brazil is available at www.br.aol.com.
Brazil’s similarly named America On Line won the San Paolo ruling for aol.com.br, though AOL said it may appeal.
This is Big Entertainment’s second major move with Hollywood.com and
bigE.com. A deal is also in the works with CBS, in which the television
network plans to take a 35 percent stake in the company for $100 million.
