According to IMDB, the story will follow a cowardly farmer enlisting the help of a gunslinger to win back the woman who left him. More details surrounding the film have surfaced as well; we know MacFarlane will be playing a sheep farmer named Albert. The film is already packed with star studded talent, as Charlize Theron, Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried, Sarah Silverman, and Giovanni Ribisi have all been reported to appear in the film. The movie is slated to release May 30th, 2014.

The movie ‘Ted’ raked in $549 million, which undoubtedly lead to the quick team-up of MacFarlane and Universal so soon after their first work together. Along with the western comedy, there have been rumors that the film company is interested in releasing ‘Ted 2′. There have been no concrete details released concerning this project, however.

As you can see by the clip below, MacFarlane is no stranger in poking fun at cowboys and the west. Though that can really be said of any topic, when dealing with Family Guy.

Presumably, the experience will be more family-friendly than the pictured “Ke$ha Vevo Takeover”.

The two will also collaborate on the production of music-based original programming, such as event coverage, music video premieres and live music experiences with Disney recording artists.

“Music is universally loved and shared by people of all ages,” said Vevo CEO Rio Caraeff. “We are very proud to partner with Disney to offer quality music programming for families to enjoy together and on the viewing platform of their choice.”

“Music is a key component of the Disney.com offering and deepens the premium family entertainment experience we offer Guests online,” said Jimmy Pitaro , co-president of Disney Interactive. “And now we are amplifying the Disney experience by partnering with the world’s leading digital music video platform.”

Last month, The Guardian reported that Google was poised to take about a 10%stake in Vevo, but that the deal had not been signed yet.

Vevo was founded by Universal and Sony.

The deal allows for the shows to be shown via “traditional syndication windows and electronic sell-through services,” but Netflix will be the only online service to provide the content.

Among the eight Warner Bros Television Group shows that Netflix is snatching up is the J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions drama Revolution (NBC). Also, USA’s Political Animals starring Sigoruney Weaver and ABC’s 666 Park Avenue. The upcoming FOX drama The Following starring Kevin Bacon will come to Netflix as well.

“This unprecedented agreement brings to Netflix members earlier and more exclusively than ever before complete previous seasons of some of the most prominent and successful shows on network and cable television,” said Ted Sarandos, Netflix Chief Content Officer. “Through deals like this, Netflix is making the production economics right for the continued creation of the kind of compelling serialized dramas and thrillers that our members love.”

“SVOD has become an important window for our serialized dramas, allowing viewers a chance to discover a series that before might have been intimidating to tune into mid-run,” said Bruce Rosenblum, President, Warner Bros. Television Group. “We continue to adapt our business models to include SVOD when it makes sense for the long-term value of each show and are thrilled to have Netflix as one of our distribution partners.”

This announcement comes just one day after HBO and Universal announced an exclusive partnership that saw the companies extend their content relationship for another decade. Just one month ago, Netflix inked an exclusive deal with Disney Films to show content inside the pay TV window.

With these moves, the battle between online streaming services and pay-TV services proves to be in full swing.

HBO and Universal Pictures have announced an extension of their licensing deal which will make sure that Universal Pictures and Focus Features’ movies stay on HBO for the next ten years.

Of course, this isn’t a new deal. HBO and Universal have had a relationship since 2003. This is just a step to secure that relationship for another decade. HBO wants to make sure its loyal partner isn’t tempted to stray, you know, by the allure of another streaming platform like Netflix.

As you would expect, the new HBO/Universal deal gives HBO exclusive rights to the content. So Netflix, Amazon Prime, nor any other streaming content provider can offer what HBO offers in terms of some of the world’s most in-demand titles.

“Through our long and successful partnership with Universal Pictures, HBO has been able to deliver some of the biggest and best Hollywood theatricals to our subscribers,” said HBO’s Bruce Grivetti. “We are excited to extend our relationship with Universal Pictures and have now solidified HBO’s position for first-run theatricals into the next decade.”

“With HBO’s far-reaching network of premium services, ranging from the traditional in-home experience to its mobile applications, we are pleased to continue this relationship and bring Universal and Focus Features’ films to HBO subscribers for many years to come,” said Rick Finkelstein, COO. “With our upcoming slate of films, HBO will continue to offer outstanding film content to their already vast library of movies, specials and award-winning original programming.”

In the content wars, it’s not just about snatching up content for your service, but also snatching it up exclusively. Just a month ago, Netflix inked a huge deal with Disney – a multi-year partnership that will bring new films to Netflix inside the pay TV window. And yes, it’s an exclusive deal.

Things are heating up between two of the major players in the game. It’s funny to think that just six months ago, people were discussing rumors of an HBO/Netflix partnership, despite their somewhat rocky history.

According to reports, MGA paid Lady Gaga an advance of $1 million to produce a series of dolls based on her likeness. After the singer pocketed the money and agreed to the conditions, the company set forth to create said merchandise. MGA had originally planned to release the toys this summer in hopes of drumming up some interest before the holiday season rolled in. Unfortunately, Gaga and Universal Music Group had other plans.

In April, Bravado, the merchandising firm owned by said music mogul, decided they wanted to unleash the toys upon the masses in 2013, around the same time that Lady Gaga’s next album is scheduled to drop. This, of course, did not settle too well with the folks at MGA, who have invested quite a bit of money in the product. Seeing as how they anticipated nearly $28 million in revenue from the fall 2012, it’s understandable that MGA is a little ticked off at the moment.

As a result of the whole debacle, the company is suing Lady Gaga, Universal, and Bravado for $10 million due to what they feel is a breach of contract. MGA claims they put reputation on the line to secure plenty of shelf space for the toys, and now they’re left with a rather large problem thanks to the delay. Now they want compensation.

“This is a dispute between Universal Music Group’s merchandising company and MGA,” a spokesperson for Lady Gaga said in a statement. “There was no legitimate reason for dragging Lady Gaga into that dispute. Lady Gaga will vigorously defend MGA’s ill-conceived lawsuit and is confident that she will prevail.”

“The first is clearly a mobile play: Apple and Google are the players who control the critical app ecosystems for iOS and Android,” he adds. “Today, Facebook users who access the service with tablets or smartphones predominantly do so through iOS and Android apps. Facebook is intent on crafting a future strategy that is independent of competitors for a myriad of reasons including fees, data, control, etc. They are doing this by, among other things, pushing for HTML 5 based web-apps to eventually circumvent the need for app stores altogether.”

“Currently, there are several limitations that prevent this and photo apps sit at the heart of those (e.g. use of camera/photos and other native device functionality),” Katz continues. “Facebook is making a huge, strategic push into mobile through everything it does, and Instagram will be a very important part of that effort.”

Facebook has indeed been placing a great deal of emphasis on mobile, since citing it as a major risk factor in its IPO filing. For one, they’ve initiated the RingMark initiative (and recently open sourced it), a mobile browser test suite to increase the functionality of apps on mobile browsers, working with the W3C in the process.

Instagram is a very popular mobile app that fits right into Facebook’s home turf, and the deal makes a great deal of sense for a variety of reasons.

“The second, and less obvious reason Facebook made this acquisition, has to do with the changing state of the social media landscape,” says Katz. “Though Facebook has a massive user base, what it lacks are the passionate communities that have fueled the growth of companies such as Pinterest and Instagram. This is a fact that hasn’t been lost on marketers. It’s for this reason that large and small brands alike have recently started running Facebook campaigns that incorporate their Pinterest and Instagram marketing efforts.”

“New Belgium Beer’s work with Friend2Friend is an interesting example of creative bridge-building between audiences on different social channels — Facebook, Pandora, and Instagram — and how to expose engaging content from one channel to another,” says Katz. “The Apps ensure that content is shared among friends on Facebook, to further widen the reach. It gives them content to share on their pages, which also improves engagement. And, the content may be fan created, or may be corporate created.”

The brewing company launched a new beer called Shift Pale Lager, and teamed up with Pandora to build custom radio stations. They use a Facebook app to promote the stations to fans.

They also held a live streaming event and had fans invite their friends to a beer-drinking celebration to be entered into a contest to win an all-beer-expenses paid party.

New Belgium used an Instagram Facebook app to greatly increase the reach over what was available on Instagram itself. The app automatically updates with the latest photos posted to the company’s Instagram channel. Fans can comment and share posts to their friends on Facebook.

“We are not working on an Instagram campaign for Universal”, Katz tells WebProNews, though apparently, Universal is doing campaigns apart from Friend2Friend. “F2F doesn’t yet have a client using both Instagram and Pinterest together,” he says. “But that’s just a question of time. However, Universal is leveraging Pinterest/Facebook for their current Snow White and the Huntsman campaign.”

“In this campaign, based on an engagement tab for the movie Snow White and the Huntsman, users can view the movie trailer, see images from the movie or submit pictures that, as Universal states ‘could be featured on the Snow White and the Huntsman Pinterest page,’” he says.

“The user either submits an image file from their PC/Mac, or adds an image via URL,” he explains. “Universal Pictures (the admin of the Page and contest) reviews all images selected and determine which are a good fit for their Pinterest page.”

“This is all pretty straightforward, but represents a trend that Friend2Friend is seeing across its customer base,” he says. “Featuring more niche-oriented social networks (like Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest) on their much larger Facebook pages, and ensuring that Facebook fans become fans on the other networks as well.”

The general strategy is not new by any means, but probably often overlooked. There are certainly a lot of social channels to pay attention to, or at least options. You don’t have to target all of them, and certainly not with every campaign, but the developer ecosystem of Facebook, for one, allows for a lot of cross-service opportunities like the ones on display here.

With Facebook’s new timeline feature and the still fairly new ticker, there are a lot of opportunities to get actions from your fans seen by their friends. What’s the best example such a campaign that you’ve seen?

Chairman Seth Goldstein announced the news today at SXSW, and tweeted about it:

excited to announce that we now have licenses in place w all four majors- emi, sony, universal and warner! twitter.com/seth/status/17…

— seth goldstein (@seth) March 13, 2012

Goldstein told Billboard, “This feels like an all-time record speed launch – when we launched we really didn’t come at this from the music industry, it was all new to us. Our model is unique – we’re not a radio service, not an on-demand service. We have interesting aspects that really require some out-of-the-box thinking. We felt that from the get-go the labels were absolutely different from what I’d been led to believe. They gave us a lot of time and attention. Compared to their user base, we’re a tiny service in the broad scheme of things.”

As it is for many startups (and fans of music, for that matter), SXSW has clearly been a fun event for Turntable.fm. Here’s some video the company posted with its avatar DJing at the event:

They certainly do have a lot to celebrate now, as they become more of a competitor to more established services like Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, and all the rest. Rdio, by the way, just launched a new version of its site and apps, as well.

Turntable.fm hasn’t even been around a full year yet.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Redbox, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Coinstar, Inc, announced the signing of a multi-year agreement that will continue to make Universal Blu-ray Disc and DVD titles available for rental at Redbox locations nationwide 28 days following their home entertainment release.

That agreement will last all the way to August 2014.

As I mentioned before, this Universal deal comes on the heels of some strained negotiations between Warner Bros. and Redbox. In January, Warner Bros. doubled the window of new releases on DVD. That long-accepted 28 days jumped to and an absolutely ridiculous 56 days. This affected not only Redbox, but Netflix as well. Warner Bros then extended the lunacy by suggesting that Netflix impose a 28-day waiting period on its subscribers before they can even add new releases to their queues.

Earlier this month, we found out that Redbox planned to defy Warner Bros’ new rental delay. Redbox is currently purchasing Warner Bros. DVDs from retailers, a move that is definitely not as cost effective.

“The multi-year agreement between Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Redbox represents a win for consumers, Universal and Redbox,” said Galen Smith, senior vice president, Redbox. “Redbox is committed to forging relationships that provide our consumers with affordable and timely access to new release content.”

Although some might argue that 28 days is still pretty far away from “timely,” it’s much better than 56. Hollywood’s plan to throw any obstacle they can in front of low-cost viewing runs on the idea that people wil get fed up with waiting and go buy the full price DVD or rent it off cable on-demand. Then again, instead of prompting people to run out and buy the DVD, these kinds of moves are just as likely to prompt people to snatch up the film through other, cheaper means.

We had a conversation with Friend2Friend CEO Roger Katz to learn more about Universal’s efforts, how his company is working with the movie giant and how brands in various industries can leverage Facebook to drive commerce in 2012.

“Friend2Friend has worked with Universal for the past 2 years, providing all the social media marketing ‘engagement’ apps that reside on Facebook pages for their major movie releases, both in the US and Internationally,” he tells us. “Most recently, Universal Pictures is using Friend2Friend’s Social Media Platform to easily allow fans to turn a plan to go to the movies into a social experience on Facebook.”

“With the Universal Pictures ticketing app, fans can watch and share the movie trailer, find show times, invite friends, and buy tickets, all without leaving the Facebook wall,” he explains. “Universal kicked off this social commerce initiative with the movie ‘Safe House’ and plans to use the app on the upcoming film ‘Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax’ and other major movie releases in 2012 and beyond. The campaign enables movie-goers preferences to be socialized within Facebook, and then turned into monetizable action.”

“Further, a recent campaign for The Lorax includes a ‘stache’ app that launched in the US, and subsequently in the UK, Australia, Spain, Russia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy and Latin America,” he says. “We went on to provide an extensive ‘content’ tab for all aspects of engagement for the movie on Facebook.”

More on that here.

“Other campaigns include ‘multi-function tabs’ for the movie Despicable Me, video voting apps for Little Fockers, and many other movies,” he adds.

So, just how is social commerce changing e-commerce?

Katz, of course has some thoughts about that.

“Social commerce, a new cut at e-commerce, is just getting traction in the market,” he says. “Social commerce is leveraging the phenomenal uptake of social environments like Facebook, where consumers are increasingly spending their time…and doing so while interacting with their friends.”

“If businesses can identify the social dynamics that factor into purchases of their product, and incorporate those into the actual purchase of their products in these social environments…well that’s the ‘social commerce’ pay-off,” he adds. “In the case of the Universal Showtimes and Ticketing app, users can watch a movie trailer, get background information on the movie, look up showtimes, invite friends and buy tickets, all within their Facebook Wall —the purchase becomes part of a fundamentally social experience — one that respects the context of the social network.”

“Real social commerce isn’t just putting a wrapper around a store on Facebook, or even adding a ‘Share’ button to a shopping site,” says Katz. “It’s about really making the shopping selection and consideration something done with people you trust in your social network — and then continuing that brand experience post sale to show how much you love, and are loyal to, that brand purchase.”

Facebook is obviously the big daddy when it comes to where people are spending the majority of their social networking time.

How can brands in different industries leverage Facebook, specifically to drive commerce?

Katz says, “I think this comes back to what’s the product, and how can social behaviors factor into the sale. Is it the recommendation of a friend? Is it wanting to experience the product or event with a friend? Or is it acknowledging that there may be no direct social aspect to commerce (A brand like, say, Preparation H comes to mind!)?”

“Again, social commerce is an emerging area and opportunity,” he says. “No one has all the answers today, and only over time will a best practices model emerge. However, given the size of the audience in environments like Facebook, it’s only a matter of time until the social cash registers start ringing. Remember, no-one was buying shoes online in the mid-90s, and today who isn’t?”

As mobile use continues to grow, and Facebook starts taking it more seriously, it’s going to be quite interesting to see how big a role social commerce plays not just online, but in the physical world, where we’re out shopping in real stores.

Our own Josh Wolford reported about the video:

The RIAA and MPAA, in their push to rid the internet of what they dub rampant piracy, have set internet storage locker sites like MegaUpload firmly in their crosshairs as well. While saying that a site like MegaUpload is illegal would likely spawn quite a bit of debate, copyright holders obviously see it as part of the problem.

A group of artists have contributed their two cents to a campaign promoting the usefulness and likability of MegaUpload – and it’s a rather impressive group of artists at that. P. Diddy, Snopp Dogg, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Lil Jon, Jamie Foxx, Brett Ratner and Mary J Blige are just a few of the stars that have voiced their support for the site in an incredibly odd yet somehow catchy song aptly titled “The Mega Song.”

As WebProNews’ Shaylin Clark noted:

The video was produced entirely by Megaupload, and contains no content owned by any other party. That fact, however, did not stop Universal from reporting the video to YouTube for copyright infringement. YouTube immediately took down the video. When Megaupload re-posted it, UMG again reported it, resulting in a second takedown of the video and threats by YouTube to suspend Megaupload’s account as a repeat offender.

Today, the Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Megaupload has dropped its suit against UMG.

Of course, Megaupload has been in the news a lot since that suit was filed. The site was taken down by the Justice Department, which led to Anonymous taking down multiple government sites.

The site’s founder “Kim Dotcom” was arrested on Friday in New Zealand, and today, Reuters shared some comments from Detective Inspector Grant Wormald from the Organised and Financial Crime Agency New Zealand:

“Despite our staff clearly identifying themselves, Mr Dotcom retreated into the house and activated a number of electronic-locking mechanisms.”

“Once they gained entry into this room, they found Mr Dotcom near a firearm which had the appearance of a shortened shotgun. It was definitely not as simple as knocking at the front door.”

According to the report, firearms were seized, as well as over $8 million from financial institutions, and the FBI reportedly claims Dotcom made $42 million from Megaupload in 2010 alone.

Apparently, Dotcom has been arrested on insider trading and embezzlement charges in the past, as well.