Over opening weekend, the movie ended up taking in $11.5 million domestically, which was more than expected. Variety reports:

According to Lionsgate, 32% of “Money’s” entire audience polled on opening night was aware of the Groupon deal, but only 11% of auds bought tickets using the promotion.

More telling, however, is that 93% of the film’s Groupon patrons saw “Money” because of the discounted rate. That means just 7% of Groupon auds already intended to see the film, Groupon notwithstanding.

Clearly, that speaks a great deal about Groupon’s influence. Considering, as Variety’s report indicates, Lionsgate was more aiming at spreading word of mouth for the film than expecting the Groupon deal to significantly boost box office numbers, I’d say they’re content with the strategy.

This is the second time a Groupon deal has proven effective for Lionsgate, as they also saw similar success with the Lincoln Lawyer last year.

The Financial Times is reporting that Abduction, the newest film from Lionsgate, will be available day-and-date on Facebook with the DVD release today. This is the first time that a film has been on the social networking site the same day as the DVD release.

The film will be available for $3.99 for a 48-hour Facebook rental. Lionsgate will also offer an exclusive interview with the film’s star.

A cool feature that comes along with this news is the ability to write notes about the film while watching it. You can them post them on the social network for your friend’s to see while they are watching the film. Of course, this could be exploited to reveal major spoilers before they happen to ruin the film for your friends.

The film studio decided to go with Facebook because they have confidence the social networking giant can help them generate online video rentals in the crucial early weeks of a home video release. It will also help them gather personal information on film aficionados that can be used for further marketing vehicles.

Anne Parducci, Executive VP of Marketing at Lionsgate, told the Financial Times that this will give them a direct contact to their fans that their Facebook page didn’t provide.

About 14 studios have previously offered released movies for rental on Facebook since Warner Bros. offered The Dark Knight on the service, according to the Financial Times.

The film, which is set to open nationwide on September 9th, will have a Labor Day weekend preview on September 4th at 7 p.m. In an attempt to drum up moviegoers, Lionsgate created the hashtag #WARRIORMovieSneakPreview to see if this would help spread the word of mouth about the film.

In addition to the Labor Day weekend preview of the movie, they’ve also created a dedicated site specifically for September 4th ticket sales. It’ll be interesting to see how the films preview showing does, as Twitter does seem to have an effect on the box office, as we’ve discussed before.

If you’re not familiar with Warrior, IMDB gives the following summary — you can also check out the trailer below:

“Two brothers face the fight of a lifetime – and the wreckage of their broken family – within the brutal, high-stakes world of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighting in Lionsgate’s action/drama, WARRIOR. An ex-Marine haunted by a tragic past, Tommy Riordan returns to his hometown of Pittsburgh and enlists his father, a recovered alcoholic and his former coach, to train him for an MMA tournament awarding the biggest purse in the history of the sport. As Tommy blazes a violent path towards the title prize, his brother, Brendan, a former MMA fighter unable to make ends meet as a public school teacher, returns to the amateur ring to provide for his family. Even though years have passed, recriminations and past betrayals keep Brendan bitterly estranged from both Tommy and his father. But when Brendan’s unlikely rise as an underdog sets him on a collision course with Tommy, the two brothers must finally confront the forces that tore them apart, all the while waging the most intense, winner-takes-all battle of their lives”.

The film stars Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, Nick Nolte and Jennifer Morrison among others.

Additional seasons of “Mad Men” will be available after they have aired on the AMC network.

The deal is valued between $75 million and $100 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. Netflix is paying nearly $1 million per episode for the series.

Lionsgate announced last week that it has entered into a new three-year agreement with “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner to continue as showrunner and “Mad Men” will return to AMC for Seasons 5 and 6 with the expectation of a seventh season as well.

“Mad Men has been and continues to be a representation of TV at its best and Netflix is proud to be the syndication home for this acclaimed series,” said Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer at Netflix.

“This deal secures long term instant access to an iconic show for Netflix members for years to come.” 

Under a separate agreement, the first four seasons of “Mad Men” are already available to watch instantly streaming from Netflix in Canada.

Epic has subscription pay TV rights to new releases and movies from its partners’ libraries, and Netflix will have access to them 90 days after their premium pay TV and subscription on demand debuts. According to Epix, distribution rights to these films are usually pre-sold to pay TV for as long as 9 years after their theatrical release.

"Adding EPIX to our growing library of streaming content, as the exclusive Internet-only distributor of this great content, marks the continued emergence of Netflix as a leader in entertainment delivered over the Web," said Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for Netflix. "The EPIX deal is an example of the innovative ways in which we’re partnering with major content providers to broaden the scope and freshness of choices available to our members to watch instantly over the Internet.”

Mark Greenberg, president of EPIX, added,  "Netflix is an incredibly popular service and we welcome them as our newest distribution partner. We are pleased to be able to continue our mission of bringing consumers the movies where they want to watch them, while satisfying the differing needs of cable, telco and satellite operators. This deal also underscores the tremendous value of our offerings in the marketplace."

The more deals like this Netflix is able to make, the better it will do against the increasing amount of competition it faces. Netflix already has a similar deal in place with Starz. 

It’s a little deal in terms of the Lionsgate content being made available on YouTube. Shorter clips, rather than full length features and shows, will make up the proposed Lionsgate channel.

Buzz about the arrangement began at the Madison & Vine Conference in Los Angeles, where Google CEO Eric Schmidt mentioned the deal, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

“You can take the strategy of fighting an endless war of trying to take down and resist YouTube or you can take the strategy of embracing the fact people seem to want to watch content in this way,” Curt Marvis, president of digital media at Lionsgate, said in the report.

Monetizing the relationship offers some potential stumbling blocks. The type of advertising to be used may be of the pre-roll variety, rather than some of the newer formats for displaying ads on video content.

Wired said pre-roll ads make advertisers happy, even though viewers hate them. But other models YouTube could use, like inline and overlay ads, apparently do not perform as well for advertisers.

Since both YouTube and Lionsgate want to make money, we’re expecting a healthy dose of pre-roll ads once they stock the channel and open it to visitors.