[TFrancis]

I think that the benefits of price (free) and availability (theater comes to you) are only likely to increase movies watched via YouTube. Once a movie does have 165M page views in an opening weekend (and one will), which will be a better measure of movie performance: the box office or Google?

[Retric]

That depends on the movie, harry potter pulled in 139.7M over its Wednesday-to-Sunday debut period. I don't see free with advertising adding enough people to make close to that much money.

However, a movie like clerks could be vary profitable online.

[philwelch]

The best measure will always be revenue. Can YouTube generate better revenue for film producers than movie theaters? Not even television in its heyday could do that.