In a new effort to win a larger portion of the rapidly growing revenues from pay television, three of Hollywood's six largest movie studios are going to become partners in an all-movie pay-television network, those close to the deal said yesterday.
The three studios - Paramount Pictures, MCA Inc. and Warner Brothers - would become partners in ''The Movie Channel'' - a 24-hour cable network that reaches two million subscribers and is owned by Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment, a joint venture between American Express and Warner Communications, the parent company of Warner Brothers.
The deal is expected to be made public this week, and it represents the second attempt by major studios in two years to compete more effectively with Home Box Office, the dominant paytelevision network with about nine million subscribers.
That competition is particularly significant because it is widely believed that the revenues from films shown on pay television will exceed those derived from theaters within the next five to 10 years.
None of the heads of the studios were willing to discuss the proposal, but details about the partnership were obtained from executives who had been involved in negotiations.
The first effort by the studios was made two years ago, when four of them, including Paramount and MCA, formed a pay-television service called ''Premiere,'' which would have offered the partners' films first pay-television showing exclusively to subscribers. However, the Justice Department brought suit, and the service was ruled illegal on anti-trust grounds in January 1981. Under the new plan, the three studio partners in The Movie Channel would each continue to offer their films to other pay-television networks as well. That approach makes any antitrust action less likely. Value Put at $100 Million
The Movie Channel deal would create four equal partners - the three studios and Warner-Amex. An executive at one of the companies involved in the deal put the value of The Movie Channel at $100 million, meaning that the cost to each of the new studio partners will be about $25 million.
The partnership would assure that The Movie Channel and other paytelevision services would have available the products from three of Hollywood's most successful studios, at a time when Home Box Office has increasingly been using its considerable resources to buy exclusive pay-television rights to films. HBO already has a deal with Columbia Pictures, giving it access to a choice of that studio's most desirable films over the next several years.
Some studio executives have been concerned that HBO's dominance in pay television - it has about 50 percent of all pay-television subscribers - and its practice of buying exclusive products could squeeze out competitors, and thus diminish the pay-television revenues to be earned by film studios.
HBO has countered that some of its investment in exclusivity has been to help producers complete films that the studios declined to invest in, and that in general exclusivity has become essential to any service seeking to differentiate itself in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
HBO stands to gain from The Movie Channel deal in at least one respect. Because the three partner studios have vowed to make their films available to all comers, HBO will be able to buy those studios' films, too, without sacrificing the exclusive deals it has already made.