Videoflicks hires Burt Reynolds

Actor Burt Reynolds has landed a role in cyberspace. Videoflicks.com Inc. of Brampton, Ont., has hired Mr. Reynolds to promote its on-line video store, which specializes in relatively obscure movies on VHS and DVD formats.

By becoming a Videoflicks.com spokesman, Mr. Reynolds joins a growing list of Hollywood celebrities, including William Shatner, Cindy Crawford and Whoopi Goldberg, pitching for dot-coms.

Mr. Reynolds said yesterday that his love of films and film history gives him the credibility to recommend movies for Videoflicks.com, which has access to about 100,000 titles.

"If I was on the category of movies on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, I could do very well," Mr. Reynolds said during an interview at a Toronto hotel.

The 64-year-old actor, who has appeared most recently in Striptease, Boogie Nights and Mystery, Alaska, said he'll publish a top-10 list of his favourite movies on the site, direct a Videoflicks.com commercial in which he'll also star, sit on the board of directors and help the company secure distribution rights to movies that have been discontinued.

In return, Mr. Reynolds gets an undisclosed amount in stock options. It may be a gamble to take his payment in options, but it is one that paid Star Trek's Mr. Shatner millions of dollars when he exercised some of his Priceline.com options for endorsing the name-your-own-price on-line service. Others such as Ms. Goldberg reportedly received 100,000 stock options for hawking gift certificates on Flooz.com, and supermodel Ms. Crawford accepted options from the parent company of Babystyle.com for providing fashion tips to new mothers.

Michael Kavanagh, Videoflicks.com's founder and chief executive officer, said Mr. Reynolds was the company's only choice for celebrity spokesman and that the publicity generated from his future films, which include two to be shot in New Orleans and Amsterdam this year, will help promote the company.

"If you have a star, it lends weight," Mr. Kavanagh said. "Hopefully that's going to grow our business."

Videoflicks.com executives pursued Mr. Reynolds in July when he was filming the movie Driven in Toronto and Montreal with Sylvester Stallone.

Mr. Reynolds said he has only recently started using a computer because his 11-year-old son took a computer class in school and has excelled at trading on a mock stock market. "But he hasn't gotten on 60 Minutes," he said, referring to a feature story about Jonathan Lebed, the teenager who pumped and dumped stocks over the Internet and made $272,826 (U.S.).

When asked if he has used Videoflicks.com, Mr. Reynolds said he bought Mountains of the Moon, a 1989 flick about Victorian explorers Sir Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke and their search for the source of the Nile. "That's just crying to be seen."

Videoflicks.com sells some mainstream movie releases, but the majority are foreign, classic and hard-to-find titles, with 70 per cent of its business originating in the United States and the rest in Europe and Canada. The site also auctions off rare or out-of-print movies. One fan bought Arnold Schwarzenegger's Pumping Iron for $300 and another offered $500 for The Boys in Company C, Mr. Kavanagh said.

The company launched its Web site five years ago and trades over the counter in the United States and on the Canadian Venture Exchange. It also owns a chain of 35 video retail stores in Ontario and British Columbia, 31 of which are franchised.

Videoflicks.com's loss in the three months ended May 31 narrowed to $164,000 from $300,000. Sales increased to $697,000 from $505,000. The company expects to be profitable by the end of this year.

The stock fell 3 cents (Canadian) to 24 cents on the Canadian Venture Exchange yesterday.