If you missed Casablanca during its movie-theater rerelease earlier this year, fear not. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, you can screen it for free tomorrow night from the comfort of your blanket cocoon or pillow fort. Because yes, screening movies for free is something Facebook does now.
The Casablanca stream is happening on Wednesday night between 7:00 p.m. EDT and 9:00 p.m. PDT and is a super elaborate publicity stunt by Warner Bros. to boost sales of the deluxe Blu-ray and DVD that was released in March. Warner Bros. launched a movie rental app with Facebook back in 2011 — am I the only one who completely missed that development? — but this will be their first movie available for free, albeit for one night only.
It'll be interesting to see how this experiment goes, since it could lead to more studios working with social media. On the one hand, this kind of stuff gives me irrational nightmares of a movie-theater-less world where I have to sign my life away to Facebook to watch the new Batman. But on the other, if even one teenager clicks on this and falls in love with Casablanca (or Humphrey Bogart), I say job well done.