Paramount Pictures’ Jackass movie franchise is moving to the Web, with what they are calling the first studio-backed film to premiere online:

On Dec. 19, the studio will make Jackass 2.5 available in connection with Blockbuster’s Movielink service. The hour-plus film has original material and previously unseen outtakes from the second Jackass movie in 2006. The new movie, made for less than $2 million, will stream for free but will have 15- or 30-second commercials before and after it plays.

At the same time, the studio’s fellow subsidiary of Viacom, MTV Networks, and the creators of the Jackass franchise are using the new film to attract traffic to jackassworld.com, now under construction.

The site is billed as an online community offering blogs, original video content and an archive of the 24 episodes of Jackass, which ran on MTV in 2000 and 2001, as well as its longer-running spinoff Wildboyz.

The move is a conservative one, since Jackass 2.5 is a low-budget film largely cobbled together from outtakes. But the release is another example of how Viacom is taking the lead in testing the ad-supported Internet video model.