For the first time, Bugs Bunny and dozens of his animated companions at Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. unit will be housed together on a single internet portal. The new Web site, dubbed T-Works, for “Toon Works,” is scheduled to go live in April.
It is the latest effort by a major Hollywood studio to control distribution of its content while simultaneously playing catch-up to established social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook and virtual worlds like Second Life.
The ad-supported site will be free to consumers. Users will be able to watch classic cartoons and original animated programming designed specifically for distribution on the site; create virtual worlds using cartoon characters as their online identities, or avatars; and customize their online identities on their own computers and on social-networking sites. They can also digitally alter cartoon characters to their liking and play online games based on the animated characters.
[via The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.)]