Traditional media has been trying to take over the new media sector for years now.  News Corp. bought MySpace, NBC launched its own streaming video site, and just about every major printed media company has a web-based segment to capture the online audience.

But the merging of traditional and new media has still been a slow and sometimes difficult task, as the Internet continues to provide a lawless outlet of sorts for those looking to avoid traditional and mainstream media.  Hollywood, on the other hand, has been used as an in-move for much of the traditional media companies to infiltrate online media in order to combine many aspects of these two media forms, though sometimes in vain.

We’ve seen several online initiatives launched directly from Hollywood, in hopes of finding a new form of low-budget entertainment that can be distributed to the masses, along with attempts at viral marketing campaigns or futile recreations of user-generated content that won the hearts of millions. 

The latest tactic?  Just make a movie about web-based media.  From the story of Facebook to the tale of a blogger named Julia, big budget films are beginning to take over.  They’re taking the story of startups and alternative forms of publishing and turning them into mainstream forms of media.  Hollywood is giving the web-based lifestyle its stamp of approval.

I’m all for watching a good flick.  But a movie being made about a piece of culture that I’m deeply involved in is a particularly interesting occurrence for me to witness at this point in my life.  Hollywood has a tendency to portray certain aspects of real life in a way that is accepted by viewers, and that is what often becomes the adopted version of history.  It is this very reason why I enjoy movies as much as I do, but I’m a little wary of Hollywood’s intention of retelling the stories of college-age founders and curious cooks who like to blog.

It’s an unavoidable part of our current culture–the web has gone Hollywood.  Our lives have reached a point where so much of our interaction is carried out online that it’s relatable and worthy of a Hollywood production.  For me, this boils down to whether or not I can trust Hollywood to make the right movies in the right way.  Equally as important is the fact that I’ve been witnessing the merging of traditional and new media for some time, and such movies appear to be just another way in which corporations can make the public comfortable with this fact.

Hopefully Hollywood will do the web world justice.  There were multiple points in history when Hollywood was the media maverick itself.  I would love to see a return to that attitude when Hollywood producers consider the potential for the films their making about our current media maverick.