Warner Movies Come to Wii in Japan

Want to download and watch Batman Begins, Contact, Last Samurai and 2001: A Space Odyssey on your Wii? You can! If you're in Japan.

Fujisoft, makers of the Everyone's Theater Wii service for the Japanese Wii, announced today a tie-up with Warner Entertainment Japan and Warner Brothers Digital Distribution that will make a bunch of Warner hits available for digital rental on the Wii. Fifty-four movies will be available starting tomorrow (July 15), priced at the service's standard rental price of 300 WiiPoints for 48 hours.

Outside of the above, the lineup includes Goonies, Free Willy and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. More titles will follow following the initial batch.

Everyone's Theater Wii is a WiiWare-based video-on-demand service. To use the service, Wii owners must download a 500 WiiPoint viewing app. They then gain access to a growing library of anime, television dramas and, most recently, movies. The videos stream in DVD quality.

While many of the Warner titles are older, there's one exception. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button arrives on the download service simultaneously with the start of Japanese DVD and Blu-ray sales and rentals. Fujisoft said to expect more new releases from Warner in the future.

This service is Japan-only at the moment. But at the very least, it makes it clear that video on demand can be done on the Wii.

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/100/1003404p1.html