A top-five Hollywood talent agency has formed an online unit for seek out emerging creators of online video content and finding work for them in both web-based advertising/entertainment and older media.

The United Talent Agency, linked with luminaries such as Vince Vaughn, Jack Black, M. Night Shyamalan and Dick Wolf, hopes to recruit creative people for major media portals seeking to develop original content - as well as the next generation of TV and film writers and directors - writes the New York Times (via Micro Persuasion). Brent Weinstein will head the new unit, UTA Online, which will operate independently and has an initial staff of three 26-year-old agents promoted from assistant.

The three have already cut six-figure deals with portals and signed several clients. Those clients' web-based serials, comedy features and digital short films have sometimes had one-time downloads in the millions, and regular watchers in the tens of thousands.

United Talent isn't the only one in the game; agencies like International Creative Management and Endeavor, frequently bid against it, and William Morris Agency created a digital media division in May.