For our first-ever media conference, we’re trying to cast a wide net, so you’ll hear from movers and shakers from a range of companies. The common theme: All of them are making and distributing content during a time of unprecedented technological change. How do they adapt?

So far, we’ve announced that Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, New York editor David Remnick, Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. and News Corp. chief operating officer Chase Carey will be joining us on Jan. 30 and 31 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Nigel, just south of Los Angeles.

Let’s add three more to that list:

Bob Pittman helped build MTV, then AOL. And after spending several years as a full-time investor in everything from Zynga to a high-end tequila, he’s running a media company once again — this time overseeing radio and billboard giant Clear Channel. Why would you want to run a radio company when everyone’s consumed with the likes of iTunes, Pandora and Spotify? Because it’s still a growth industry, Pittman argues. And the fact that it’s the industry that gave him his start, at age 15, makes the story even more interesting.

Thomas Tull is a relative newcomer to Hollywood, but he’s moving fast. After founding Legendary Pictures in 2004, he’s produced a string of hits, including “The Hangover,” “The Dark Knight” and “300.” And if you accuse him of making dude-centric movies that appeal to “fanboys,” he won’t flinch — they’re the ones who still come out to the theaters, if you know how to get them there. Last spring, his track record helped him secure an investment from Silicon Valley heavyweight Accel Partners, which gives you a hint about where Tull thinks all of this is going.

Joint ventures formed by big media companies are a tricky proposition, but Rio Caraeff seems to be making his work. Vevo, the “Hulu for music videos,” is co-owned by Universal Music Group and Sony Music, and helped in large part by Google’s YouTube. And as of last month it was the second-biggest video site on the Web — a title that used to be held by Hulu.

Just like our flagship D: All Things Digital conference, D: Dive into Media will give you rare access to deep, smart talks with the people who matter. And we’ll be announcing more of them in the weeks to come. For now: You can find registration information here.

Helping to achieve these records were nearly magical online and mobile presales that took place in the 45-days leading up to its debut.

Comcast-owned Fandango, which sells tickets online and through mobile applications to more than 16,000 screens, reports it sold more midnight and early morning show tickets for “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2”’ than it did for the late night openings of any other movie (including “The Dark Knight” and “Twilight”‘s “New Moon”).

It said many of the sales were for screenings starting at midnight, and that in total, more than 6,000 showtimes sold out on Fandango between midnight and the wee hours of the morning.

In all, the movie represented 93 percent of the day’s total ticket sales from its site.

Fandango charges a service fee of $1.25 for each ticket sold, but it’s difficult to say how much it would have grossed from the movie since a spokesperson declined to say how many individual tickets the 6,000 showtimes represented.

Fandango’s closest competitor MovieTickets.com also reported strong sales, reports MovieCityNews.com. As of Wednesday, it had sold more tickets for “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2″ than any other movie released in 2011 — and that sales exceeded all ticket sales for “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.”

Variety is reporting that as of 1 pm Pacific time on Friday, the movie had already collected $24 million in domestic day-time sales, putting it on pace to break the record currently being held by “The Dark Knight.” That’s in addition to the $43.5 million in midnight sales.

If the pace continues, it may garner $80 million, which would far exceed Dark Knight’s $$67.2 million in opening day receipts.

That’s the takeaway from Accel Partners’ $40 million bet (via secondary shares) on Legendary Pictures, the producers behind hits like “The Hangover” and “The Dark Knight”.

You can already rent “The Dark Knight” on Facebook, via a Warner Bros. test program. But Accel’s Jim Breyer figures the social network will move beyond tests and become an important distribution platform for the movie business–and all content businesses–in the future.

And since Breyer is a Facebook board member (Accel is Facebook’s second-largest shareholder, after Mark Zuckerberg) content-makers ought to pay close attention to what he’s thinking and doing.

Peter Kafka: We’re not used to seeing VCs pour money into Hollywood studios, because they don’t seem like places where you can get huge returns. What is Accel thinking?

Jim Breyer: We believe there are a number of extraordinary opportunities that sit at the intersection of content and social networking platforms like Facebook. And there will be multichannel distribution capabilities for video content beyond classic theatrical and television release.

We try to take a 3-5 year view, and we feel more deeply than ever that proprietary content and creativity that can be delivered across multiple channels is an extremely attractive investment area.

As someone who makes content, that’s nice to hear. Because it seems like most tech investors are interested in putting money into content platforms and distribution plays, not content-makers.

I think in selected cases there’s extraordinary value in investing in content. It is a really unique time for deeply creative content developers to build very signifcant businesses that scale extremely quickly.

This is also one of the reasons behind our opening an office New York, in January. My vision is that a reasonable amount of our New York investments will have a very significant content flavor.

I can already rent and watch one Legendary movie on Facebook. Accel is a Facebook investor, and you’re on Facebook’s board. Where do you think the company is headed when it comes to video?

My hope is that Facebook continues to build out a platform that enables not only traditional video to be distributed, in an extremely meaningful way, but that enables new content and experiences to be deployed creatively, successfuly, and on a global basis.

But does that mean Facebook will become a distributor? Or a retailer? Or a hub where you can consume video?

I think there are number of different models. But at the heart of what Facebook is trying to do is enable outstanding content and application developers to develop breakthrough video and media applications.

So it’s going to fundamentally be a platform where outside companies can set up shop.

That would be my view, as a board member.

What other content plays interest you? What about music? If you wanted to, you could buy a piece of Warner Music Group right now.

We are looking at a wide range of content-driven companies. We are looking at libraries of entertainment, new opportunities in areas such as sports, news, publishing, as well as social games and other applications that fit very well with the social nature of today’s emerging platforms.

So if I own a big catalog of, say, songs, that could be something you’d look at.

That would be correct.

I’m confused.

Yesterday you owned Netflix shares. Today you sold them, prompted by the news that Hollywood had begun renting movies on Facebook, using the social network’s payment platform.

That can’t possibly be true, right? Because if you were a Netflix investor, surely you knew that the company competes with every big player in tech, right? From Apple on down? Including companies that haven’t announced they’re competing with Netflix just quite yet?

Okay, then. At least we’re clear about this now.

And here’s the thing: Facebook, with its 600 million users and its own currency system, can compete with all kinds of companies–not just the ones selling Web video. So if Netflix investors are skittish today, they might have a lot of company down the road.

For the record: Warner Bros. says today’s Dark Knight rental is simply a test. And Facebook won’t say anything specific about rentals at all, just that it’s “looking forward to seeing the new and interesting ways that developers and partners use credits to offer virtual and digital goods in the future.”

And to be fair, if either party were really gung-ho about this, they’d make a bigger splash. Instead, Time Warner’s film studio is starting out by offering a three-year-old movie that its target audience has already watched over and over again.*

I can make other Facebook-won’t-kill-Netflix arguments for you, too, if that makes you feel better:

• The current set-up really competes with retailers who sell or rent movies, not the Netflix subscription model. Hard to imagine someone giving up an $8 a month Netflix all-you-can-eat account because they can rent a single movie for $3. But it is easy to imagine someone renting a movie on Facebook instead of iTunes or Amazon.
• The current set-up–individual studios distributing movies via individual fan pages–won’t compete with Netflix, for now, either. If Facebook and the studios are going to be serious about this, they’ll need a centralized storefront.
• Did we mention that this is a single movie from a single studio? The Netflix digital catalog has some 20,000 titles. And subscribers who pay for the DVD option get more than 100,000 titles.

But Warner Bros. will certainly be trying more of these, says digital distribution head Thomas Gewecke. “We think it’s a very powerful proposition to make our movies commercially available where our fans are,” he said this afternoon.

Hard to imagine other studios not reaching the same conclusion. And–this is where things get really interesting–hard to imagine other content-makers not trying the same thing.

Facebook won’t let people buy physical items with Facebook Credits–just digital goods. And if I understand the company correctly, it won’t even let you download the goods you buy. You’ve got to consume them on the site itself.

I don’t know how that restriction syncs with Warner’s announced plan to sell downloads, but I don’t see that being a long-term issue, either.  I can’t think of a reason why Facebook wouldn’t let a select group of vendors sell downloads if they wanted to. (And we’re supposedly moving to a cloud-based, rental/subscription consumption model anyway, where ownership is supposed to be less important.)

So think about everything else you could sell via Facebook Credits, if you wanted to: TV shows, of course. But also e-books, e-magazines and e-newspapers. And music. And software and games. Does this sound familiar?

It should to Steve Jobs, who moved $1.1 billion worth of virtual goods through Apple’s iTunes store last quarter.

Good thing his investors aren’t as skittish as Netflix CEO Reed Hastings’s. At least not today.

Now that’s over. The social media giant is taking its first step to connect you with movies and TV shows, while collecting a fee in the process. It’s going to let users rent movies directly from the site, using Facebook Credits to pay for the transaction.

First up is “The Dark Knight”, from Time Warner’s Warner Bros.. It will cost 30 credits, or $3, for a 48-hour rental, via an app the studio has built for the site. More movies, along with the ability to purchase the titles outright, are coming.

Warner Bros. describes the rental as a test, but there’s no reason this shouldn’t work. Facebook has 600 million registered users, and courtesy of Zynga and other social games, a big chunk of them are already using the site’s virtual currency. Easy to connect the dots here.

Just as important: While other video sites are trying to figure out how to add social “hooks” into their experience, Facebook doesn’t have that problem. It is the social hook.

The only odd thing about this combination is that it’s taken this long to come about. Facebook is either the 2nd or 6th-biggest video site in the U.S., depending on who’s counting. And that’s without the benefit of any Hollywood hook-up at all: Just the clips you and your pals put up.

So just imagine what could happen if Mark Zuckerberg and the big studios decide they’re really serious about making this thing work.

Press release excerpt:

WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT BECOMES FIRST HOLLYWOOD STUDIO TO OFFER MOVIES DIRECTLY ON FACEBOOK®

MILLIONS OF WARNER BROS. FACEBOOK FANS CAN NOW RENT MOVIES USING FACEBOOK CREDITS AND STREAM WITHIN STUDIO’S MOVIE FAN PAGES

PROGRAM WILL EXPAND TO DIGITAL MOVIE PURCHASES IN THE NEAR FUTURE

BURBANK, CALIF., March 8, 2011 – Warner Bros. Digital Distribution (WBDD), a market leader in video-on-demand and electronic sell-through, today announced it will begin testing an offering of selected movies for purchase or rental through Warner Bros. Entertainment’s Facebook movie Pages.  Consumers will be able to use Facebook Credits to easily buy or rent a title, all while staying connected to Facebook.

Starting today, millions of fans who “Liked” Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film “The Dark Knight” can rent the title through its official Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/darkknight).  Consumers simply click on the “rent” icon to apply their Facebook Credits, and within seconds they will begin enjoying the film.  The cost per rental is 30 Facebook Credits or $3.  This offering is presently available only to consumers in the United States.  Additional titles will be made available for rental and purchase on a regular basis over the coming months.

“Facebook has become a daily destination for hundreds of millions of people,” said Thomas Gewecke, President of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution.  “Making our films available through Facebook is a natural extension of our digital distribution efforts.  It gives consumers a simple, convenient way to access and enjoy our films through the world’s largest social network.”

Fans will have full control over the film while watching it through their Facebook account for up to 48 hours from purchase.  They can choose to watch it in full screen, pause the movie, and resume playing it when they log back into Facebook.  Consumers will also have full Facebook functionality including the ability to post comments on the movie, interact with friends and update their status.

Thanks to all the readers who set me straight. It turns out there’s an easy answer for MegaVideo’s popularity: It’s a really good way to watch pirated movies and TV shows online.

The trick, it turns out, is not to go to MegaVideo itself to look for “The Dark Knight” or HBO’s new “Eastbound & Down” show. Instead you head to sites like movietvonline.com or sidereel.com, and they’ll direct you to one of MegaVideo’s streams. The stuff generally appears to be pretty good quality, and it’s much easier to access than a BitTorrent download–if you can use Hulu, you can use this stuff.

Apologies to anyone who finds this old hat. It’s obviously becoming more and more common for many of you. Again, take a look at this comScore (SCOR) growth chart. This is how you move from obscurity to the 10th-most popular video site in a year’s time (click graphic to enlarge):

Can’t Hollywood try to crack down on sites like MegaVideo and the sites that showcase their streams? After all, Google’s (GOOG) YouTube was once a piracy haven, and is much less so now. Same thing with DailyMotion, etc.

Sure. But the Chinese government has, um, a mixed record when it comes to IP protection. And in any event, we’re certainly going to see more of these coming down the pike, and it’s only going to be more commonplace.

All of which means that Hollywood, network TV and the cable companies have no choice if they want to keep viewers from turning to the pirates: Give them easy access to whatever they want, whenever they want it.

It’s the same scenario the music guys faced at the end of the 1990s, and they screwed it up. Look at them now.

Right now some of the players are talking a good game–“We think everything on television should become available to you on broadband for free,” Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes said yesterday at an investor conference. He doesn’t really mean free, by the way–he means free to cable and satellite TV subscribers.

The industry can hash out payment plans later. But first, those who make money creating and distributing video need to move very fast to get their stuff in front of viewers, wherever they want to see it. Because MegaVideo is already doing it.

On the eve of the debut of the much anticipated “Watchmen” movie from Warner Bros., Cisco seems to be getting into the superhero game, with an unusual marketing effort that uses sophisticated comic book characters to highlight its line of security products.

More like Nerdmen! Except with more muscles and cooler outfits!

On a new Web site that is now up, for a series called “The Realm,” Cisco (CSCO) seems to have gotten some cool original work from well-known Marvel Comics illustrator Mike Mayhew.

The characters are all apparently linked to real-life Cisco engineers, as well as its products, but it is being pushed as entertainment.

The first “episode,” titled “Déjà Vu,” is now up, with more to come, the site promises, as freaky music plays in the background. It is done as a video version of a comic book.

The plot so far: “Botnet attacks in The Realm are on the rise, and Jux discovered they are after Synocorp employees. Trace, the defender brought to life in The Realm through solutions built by Engineer Roberts, fended off the bots in time to save the identity of the latest target. Can the defenders stop the threats from infiltrating Synocorp offices? Find out in episode 2.”

Not quite “The Dark Knight,” but not bad so far.

Last week, BoomTown posted on the amazing number of Joker impression videos related to the hit Batman movie, “The Dark Knight,” that were popping up all over the Web.

Next up?

Well, it seems the honor will be going to Harry Potter knockoffs and tributes, due to the upcoming sixth movie in the series about the boy wizard, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”

The movie is set to be released Nov. 21 and focuses on the early life of evil Lord Voldemort, when he was only a creepy orphan named Tom Riddle.

Here’s a video, below, of the actual trailer, which was recently released online and is playing in theaters.

And below that is a good example of one of the many user-created videos that tout the new Potter movie by using old clips to create new trailers. None of them is sanctioned by Warner Bros. (TWX), which is releasing the movie and will not likely discourage the phenomenon, as it builds excitement for the film.

Here’s a curious trend I’ve noticed developing quickly on YouTube, probably because of the acclaim that the late actor Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker in “The Dark Knight” has garnered.

His memorably malevolent turn in the latest Batman movie is likely to result a posthumous Oscar for Ledger. But perhaps more interesting is the number of fans who are doing video impressions of his performance, acting out various scenes from the movie, and posting them online in tribute.

Here are just such few videos, including ones that are dead serious and others not so much, as well as a compilation of Ledger’s various scenes at the end:

Joker/Batman Spoof

Joker Interrogation Scene

Joker Mob Meeting Scene

Joker Party Crashing Scene

Joker “Why So Serious?” Scene (as channeled by Hayden Black of “abigail’s ‘x-rated’ teen diary”)

Heath Ledger as Joker Compilation

Huh. So perhaps “The Dark Knight” will turn out to be the iPhone 3G of movies.

One of my favorite things about the Web is how quickly and effectively you can take media and mash it up into all sorts of new forms.

Case in point, this comparison of scenes from a trailer from the latest Batman movie, “The Dark Knight” and that of 1989′s original “Batman.”

Incredibly, many of the scenes are almost exactly alike.

(I had posted some trailers from “The Dark Knight” here, at the time of actor Heath Ledger’s death in January. Ledger stars in the upcoming movie as a very malevolent Joker.)

See the trailer mashup here, which is on CollegeHumor:

It is hard to look away from the swirl of media that the untimely and tragic death of Heath Ledger has engendered, and the Internet has jacked the frenzy into overdrive.

Along with an explosion of Web stories and video about the late actor–unfortunately too, please-don’t videos from outside the home of his family seem particularly appalling–there has also been controversy around a very prominent online marketing campaign that has been going on related to the next in the blockbuster Batman series, “The Dark Knight.”

Why? Because it has been focused almost exclusively on Ledger, who plays what appears to be a very warped and malevolent version of the villainous Joker (pictured here).

A terrific story in The Wall Street Journal yesterday looked at this Internet-aimed marketing effort around the Warner Bros. movie, set to come out this summer.

It’s been a slowly unfolding viral campaign online, stretching three-quarters of a year now, almost all focused on Ledger’s Joker character. It began in May with a site showing a fictional district attorney candidate, IBelieveinHarveyDent.com (still up) and then another with a defaced picture and clues, IBelieveinHarveyDentToo.com (now you only get a “page not found” message).

There have been lots of efforts like this with sites like the Gotham Times and a scarier version called the HaHaHa Times.

And, of course, the many trailers, seen below, which are all over the Web now.

But now that the already creepy online effort has taken on an even more macabre tone, one wonders what Warner Bros. will do.

Or, because this is the Web, where things tend to spin out of the control of media companies, whether the movie company can do anything at all.

Here’s some trailers, all of which are pretty amazing: