20th Century Fox Teams With Malls on Virtual Storefronts

Every day it seems like there's some new high-tech way to get the movies you want, and today a major studio has thrown another scheme into the mix and it's coming to a mall near you.

According to a press release, 20th Century Fox is teaming with Taubman Centers -- a retail investment fund that runs 26 major shopping malls in the U.S., including the Beverly Center in Los Angeles, the Dolphin Mall in Miami and the Cherry Creek Shopping Center in Denver -- to create something called the Fox Movie Mall.

Described as a "virtual storefront," the new initiative allows shoppers to walk up to a wallscape installed at the mall, pick a film title from it, scan a code and go online to make the purchase, which is then shipped directly to your door (because you certainly don't want to be carrying a hefty Blu-ray or DVD around with you).

Before you do all that, you have to first get the Fox Movie Mall app, which is available at both iTunes and the Android Market. Once you've got that loaded on your phone, you can, in the words of the press release, "Stop, Scan and Shop."

The wallscapes will apparently be set up in home entertainment "lounges" in selected locations, with HDTVs showing footage from family films such as 'Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked,' which is conveniently coming out on Blu-ray around the same time.

Coming just one day after Walmart's announcement of its new program to digitize customers' DVDs and Blu-rays for online accessibility, this new campaign is either yet another sleek and futuristic way to deliver entertainment or one more desperate gambit on the part of a major studio to get people to buy little plastic discs...we're just not sure which.