Film clips for Web’s quipsters are coming to virtual worlds

Paramount Pictures’ film vault is opening up in the virtual world.

Thousands of video clips from Paramount’s movie library -- ranging from “Footloose” to “Clueless” -- will be available inside the virtual 3-D online worlds of There.com and vMTV, Paramount Digital Entertainment and Makena Technologies Inc. said this week.

“Consumers today are not interested in a passive experience online,” said Paramount Senior Vice President of Entertainment Derek Broes. “Even when they are just watching a piece of entertainment, they’re commenting on it or looking at it with a friend. They’re very actively involved.”

There.com and vMTV members will be able to express themselves with seconds-long video clips of movie one-liners -- say, Danny Zuko’s “Be cool, huh?” from “Grease” -- with the service called VooZoo. The application from Los Angeles-based developer FanRocket was introduced on social-networking site Facebook last month and on mobile devices Tuesday.

The PG-13-or-tamer snippets will cost There.com and vMTV members about $1 and will play in a small window above avatars’ heads inside the online realms. In addition to archive footage, Paramount hopes to use the application to virally market upcoming releases, such as “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

The partnership between Paramount, MTV Networks -- both units of Viacom Inc. -- and Makena Technologies, the San Mateo, Calif.-based company behind There.com, marks the first time a movie studio has allowed movie footage to be used inside There.com.

MTV Networks has previously enlisted Makena’s There.com technology to create virtual worlds based on MTV shows under the vMTV umbrella, such as “Virtual Hills” and “Virtual Real World Sydney.” MTV Networks will begin providing video content for the VooZoo application within the next few months.

Broes would not release any numbers on how many people have been using the VooZoo service since the application was launched on Facebook last month.

He did says that there are plans to bring VooZoo to Windows Live Messenger.