Doug Luberts

There’s been talk for over a month now that producers Felicia Day and Kim Evey of The Guild,  along with their ICM Internet SuperAgent, George Ruiz, had found a sponsorship deal for the mega-hit Webisodic.  One that would allow the producers to keep full ownership of the show while providing much-needed revenues to underwrite ongoing production costs.

Today, Kim, Felicia & George all tweeted about the exciting news of the deal, along with a feature post by Felicia on The Guild’s Blog.

In addition to all the meticulously-crafted self-promotion that the team has worked so well to the advantage of the show, news of the ground-breaking deal has made the front page of The Hollywood Reporter and other main-stream news sources.

Ground breaking?  You bet your bottom-line-dollar.

New episodes of The Guild are going to debut on Xbox Live, as a Zune download, and through MSN, while Sprint is sponsoring all 12 episodes of  Season 2.

The key point here is that neither Microsoft, nor Sprint, will derive any income from future sales or ancillary rights.  This offers the creators unlimited options for exploring other sources of revenue from additional distribution

This could well be one of the most important, precedent-setting, Hollywood deals to happen since broadcast pioneer, and film singing cowboy star, Gene Autry, put standard terms into all of his contracts calling for future payments, i.e. residuals, for re-distribution of his work in any medium years before television was even a reality.

It’s also a test of just how well Microsoft’s new distribution strategy for video content will fare, which could add another highly-targeted, advertiser-supported, distribution medium to the mix.

This is a big day for everyone in new media content production.

As a fan, I’d also like to offer major ‘grats to everyone associated with The Guild, along with best wishes for continued success.  You guys continue to rock the boat, raise the bar and be a inspiration to all of us behind the camera, and all those wonderful people out there in the dark!*

Felicia Day will be on the G4 Network’s “X-Play” tonight @8PM Pacific.

*(Gratuitous Sunset Boulevard reference because, it’s Monday morning and our coffee intake hasn’t risen to levels needed for supressing our cliche response.)