The Seattle-based coffee-shop chain is expected to announce today a sweeping promotional deal for a coming film, "Akeelah and the Bee," that marks its opening foray into the movie business.

Watch a short trailer for "Akeelah and the Bee," courtesy of Lions Gate Entertainment.
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The chain will aggressively promote the film, which is being distributed by the studio Lions Gate Entertainment, in its roughly 5,500 company-operated U.S. and Canadian stores, and will sell DVDs of the movie and CDs of its soundtrack in the U.S. In exchange, Starbucks will get an undisclosed share of the movie's box-office proceeds.

Meanwhile, the company's entertainment division plans to begin selling DVDs of select movies alongside CDs later this year, and has begun vetting additional screenplays and meeting with various Hollywood studios to launch film projects, executives say.

"We know there are going to be endless opportunities as this strategy continues to grow, and we're going to look at each and every opportunity," said Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks entertainment. But he said, while Starbucks will evaluate opportunities "including getting involved in film production," the company is not interested in investing in films.

Starbucks also plans to begin selling books later this year, either with a partner or through a self-publishing effort, Chairman Howard Schultz said in an interview. "Starbucks isn't an entertainment company," he said. But "we want to have an entertainment strategy that supports the foundation of the coffee experience that our customers have come to expect and enjoy."

The moves represent a substantial ramping up of Starbucks's ambition to move into entertainment to differentiate itself from rivals. As the chain opens more stores with drive-through windows and introduces hot breakfast sandwiches, it is putting itself in more direct competition with chains such as McDonald's Corp. and Dunkin' Brands Inc.'s Dunkin' Donuts.

At the same time, by extending its reach into music, films and books, the company is positioning itself to vie with retailers such as Borders Group Inc.'s Borders Books and Music stores -- many of which include Starbucks-owned Seattle's Best Coffee cafes.

The Hollywood strategy could carry big risks given the volatility in the industry, where films often are costly undertakings with mixed results. Many other outsiders have ventured into movies only to learn how rocky the business can be. Among them are British entrepreneur Richard Branson, who issued a handful of films under his Virgin label in the 1980s before concluding it was too risky, and former telecommunications executive Philip Anschutz, who weathered flops like "Around the World in 80 Days" before hitting a box-office jackpot this winter with "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."

Moreover, Starbucks could risk alienating customers or diluting the value of its brand if its promotions come on too strong. For "Akeelah and the Bee," which opens on about 2,000 screens on April 28 and which centers on a spelling bee, Starbucks will offer trivia games on its chalk boards and feature words from the film inside its pastry cases. The movie also will be promoted on coffee-cup sleeves.

The company says it has limits; customers won't see life-sized posters of the film's actors, for instance. "That wouldn't be us," a Starbucks spokeswoman said. Mr. Lombard said the chain will sell 20 or fewer titles, including CDs and DVDs, at any given time, primarily on the specially designed "spinner racks" it installed in stores last summer.

"Our customers aren't going to walk into their favorite Starbucks and suddenly feel like we've commoditized music and CDs," he said.

For Hollywood, Starbucks represents a potentially lucrative new force at a time when the industry is struggling with a steep downturn in movie attendance and flattening sales for DVDs. With pastimes like videogames stealing customers and consumers turning to the Internet and other new technologies for entertainment content, executives are rethinking how they sell movies. A key part of that effort is finding new real estate in which to grab moviegoers' attention.

That makes nabbing space from a retailer like Starbucks, the world's largest chain of coffee shops, a brass-ring achievement for Lions Gate. The publicly held company, based in Santa Monica, Calif., is a small but significant Hollywood player that issues 15 to 18 movies a year, from slasher flicks like the "Saw" franchise to edgier creative fare like last year's drama "Crash," which both Mr. Schultz and Mr. Lombard call one of their favorite films of 2005.

Mr. Schultz has long hoped to make Starbucks more than just a coffee-shop chain. In recent years, he has cultivated relationships with Hollywood executives, earned a seat on the board of DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. and frequented the Sundance Film Festival.

After he hired Mr. Lombard, former head of Earvin "Magic" Johnson's Johnson Development Corp., to run Starbucks's entertainment division in 2004, the company quickly stepped up its involvement in music. Recently, the chain has emerged as a potent force in the struggling music industry, helping produce and distribute CDs. Though Starbucks declines to break out how much it makes from selling CDs, it says that in its most recent fiscal year, ended Sept. 30, it sold nearly 3.5 million CDs.

To oversee movies, Mr. Lombard hired Nikkole E. Denson, formerly president of Magic Johnson Entertainment and, previously, Magic Hallway Pictures. As director of business development in Starbucks Music and Entertainment, she is responsible for screening projects, including scripts, and will take a lead role in submitting prospective projects to Messrs. Lombard and Schultz. Starbucks probably will recruit other film executives to cultivate projects, executives said.

Talks with Lions Gate began in earnest about a year ago. Mr. Lombard said Starbucks executives viewed about a dozen films from various studios before settling on "Akeelah." The movie was written and director by Doug Atchison, partly as he sat in Starbucks stores.

It centers on an 11-year-old African-American girl from south Los Angeles, played by Keke Palmer, who discovers a passion for words and enters a spelling bee. Helped by her teacher, played by Laurence Fishburne, the girl reaches the National Spelling Bee.

Mr. Lombard, an African-American, said he was drawn to the film because of its "emotional tie, and the inspiration we thought was fitting and compatible with the texture and layers of the Starbucks brand and experience. It's a movie that had a natural tie to what we're about -- the sense of community in our stores."

Because of the setting of "Akeelah" and its largely African-American cast, Lions Gate executives feared it would be pigeonholed as an "urban" movie that would appeal only to inner-city blacks. But with Starbucks involved, "we can make more of America aware of it," said Lions Gate President Steve Beeks. Jon Feltheimer, CEO of Lions Gate, said, "It's a company with a pristine brand putting their brand on the line and saying, 'You should go to this movie.' "

Before the movie opens, Starbucks will host advance screenings for some holders of Starbucks cards, as well as some of its servers, known as baristas. "The baristas want to tell their customers about the things they get excited about, and we're convinced this movie is going to be one of those things," said Anne Saunders, Starbucks's senior vice president for global brand strategy and communications.

Starbucks also plans to run trailers of the film over its in-store Wi-Fi network. Currently, most Starbucks customers use the network exclusively to check email, and Mr. Schultz said this is an "evolving" opportunity to broaden that usage. "We've known for quite some time that the Wi-Fi opportunity in our stores [is] the perfect place for shorts, documentaries and other things that wouldn't be seen on the big screen," he said.

Stores will begin selling DVDs of "Akeelah" as soon as August. Pricing has yet to be determined, but Mr. Lombard said it will be consistent with how the company prices CDs.

Write to Steven Gray at steven.gray@wsj.com and Kate Kelly at kate.kelly@wsj.com