Apple Scrambles To Ink Deals With Hollywood For iCloud Movie Streaming

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When Steve Jobs unveils iCloud at next week’s WWDC, we know that all four major music labels will be onboard Apple’s streaming music service… but what about Hollywood?

Up until now, it looked as if iCloud would launch as a music-only affair without the proper deals inked with video content providers, but in a surprise development, it looks like Cupertino may be scrambling around Tinseltown trying to round up signatures after all.

According to Cnet, feature films and television shows could bery well be part of the iCloud launch next week.

In the past several weeks, Apple executives have stepped up their attempts to convince some of the major Hollywood film studios to issue licenses that would enable Apple to store its customers’ movies on the company’s servers, two sources close to the negotiations told CNET. Apple began discussing a cloud service with the studios over a year ago.

While that sounds encouraging, deals with content providers could prove even trickier than dealing with the music labels, and it’s not certain that a deal will or even can be reached by June 6th.

If Apple can get a deal signed, when iCloud debuts, you should be able to stream your legally purchased iTunes videos and television shows from the cloud to your iDevice. My guess, though, is that between meager data caps and Hollywood’s feet-dragging, iCloud will be an MP3-only affair at first. What do you think?

[via MacStories]

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