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Warner Bros. To Buy Flixster

LINDA WERTHEIMER, Host:

NPR's Carrie Kahn reports.

CARRIE KAHN: There have been 35 million downloads of Flixster's mobile app. On it, you read reviews, find local movie listings and get sneak peeks of upcoming movies, like this summer's short of those cute, talking "Toy Story" dolls.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "TOY STORY: HAWAIIAN VACATION")

MICHAEL KEATON: (as Ken) Hey. You guys are in Hawaii, too. Groovy. We stowed away in Bonnie's backpack. How'd you guys get here?

TOM HANKS: (as Woody) Ken, this is Bonnie's bedroom.

KAHN: That's what Thomas Gewecke says. He heads Digital Distribution for Warner Brothers.

THOMAS GEWECKE: It attracts an audience of movie enthusiasts who are, you know, really the right early adopters and evangelists for the next generation of visual movie services.

KAHN: Gewecke hopes that next generation will include buying DVDs, and not streaming or renting them from Netflix. DVD sales have taken a dive in recent years, while digital downloads are soaring. Warner Brothers and 60 other companies, including Sony and Comcast, are banding together to revive the DVD market. They're working on a system that would let a DVD buyer store a digital copy of that movie or TV show on an offsite server.

TV: iPhone, Android or your big screen TV.

GEWECKE: The consumer wants to know that after they buy it, they can get it anywhere, anytime.

KAHN: Carrie Kahn, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Carrie Kahn is NPR's International Correspondent based in Mexico City, Mexico. She covers Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. Kahn's reports can be heard on NPR's award-winning news programs including All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Weekend Edition, and on NPR.org.