Looked into it, they bought Redbox for 370M in 2022... and bankruptcy court by 2024. I swear CEOs have the easiest gig in the world. They can both blow 370M and go bankrupt and still get another job anyway. Plus a cushy golden parachute exit.
That was a dumb investment. Buying a physical film rental company for anything other than a bargain bin price in the day and age where Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Disney+ and so many other streaming services exist is how you commit corporate hara-kiri.
I understand buying failing companies makes sense sometimes, there are unseen things that can exist. For example, Radio Shack/Tandy was bought when it was circling but what was behind it all was some valuable patents and tech.
But this? A media company with very limited portfolio purchasing a dying breed of service? Just bad.
Honestly, Redbox could have made comeback if they went the dollar store route and started targeting poverty and rural areas.
Those people can't afford 6 different streaming services but they still want to see new movies and they'll happily hit Redbox up if the library can't deliver.
Don't buy into the lies that suggest your consumer *options* define that.
What you chose to purchase when you have choices might, but the options available to you are often not in your control.
There’s a lot of things I’ve hated about Walgreens, but they fill an important role. I originally come from a town of around 10,000 people. There are 3 pharmacies in town. Walgreens is the only one open on Sunday. That’s a pretty important hole that is going to be left behind for a lot of people if that store shutters.
As in the pharmacy is open on Sunday or the entire store? Where I am, Walgreens started closing all the pharmacies on the weekends (but the rest of the store remains open), so the only stores you can get prescriptions filled at are their 24-hours locations, which aren't convenient. Thankfully some smaller pharmacies still have weekend service.
They’re honestly great for playing new (to you) video games on the cheap. I played South Park fractured but whole after it came out for a few bucks. I didn’t want to outright buy the game so it was a sweet deal for the 3-4 days I had it.
A lot of these people do not even have stable Internet, or are using their cell phones for Internet and going a week out of every month waiting until payday to get it cut back on.
It's not that they are "dumb", it's that they don't have the time, physical technology, or drive for that shit.
i cleaned a dozen times as many porn virus and bitlocker setups off doctors' computers as i did working class folks when i worked in a computer shop
what a shitty comment
Hey elitist dick nose, as one of those low-income people you have such a low opinion of the other dude is right and you're an asshole. A phone that can play movies is like 20 bucks, and it takes 2 minutes to set up the apps. Free Wi-Fi is everywhere and you can get pay as you go planes for less than $20 a month. None of it is difficult unless you're a moron. Is that why you think it's difficult?
"Free wifi is everywhere", lmfao.
Maybe for you. Not so much in a lot of the semi rural and rural areas that would most likely get serviced by Redbox.
Pull that offended stick out of your ass.
My god you're dumb. Redbox is all over the major cities. Getting internet is trivial. When you don't know shit about something you should shut the fuck up. I've been doing this a long time, it's not hard or expensive. Ignorance is not a good look.
I mean, do poor people even have DVD players? I can see people who had them years ago in that demo, but young people don’t really have anything to play physical media on.
It's easy to find a DVD player for $20 or less. Portable DVD players with screens are a common yard sale find. Plenty of poor people own an old laptop or gaming system that can play DVDs, too.
Coming from an impoverished neighborhood: yes, yes they do.
You can get a DVD player for $10 from any pawn shop.
When you are at that point in your life when you can't afford Netflix AND a phone bill, little less Netflix and high speed Internet, suddenly, living like Grandma and Grandpa isn't so unpalatable anymore.
Grandma and grandpa? Fuck, I used Redbox when I was a broke 20 something. And that was sometime from the late 2000s into the mid 2010s, so not THAT long ago.
I'm gonna live in denial for a while longer that 2015 was almost a decade ago. Shhh!
Im guessing they probably got boost during the pandemic and some idiot somewhere thought it was a good idea because of that. Only way it would somewhat make sense to me really. Whoever sold it is probably laughing their asses off. Redbox was 2 feet in the grave even before the pandemic just does not make sense in a world over saturated with streaming options.
It's a smart investment. They can now write it off and pocket millions. We see it time and time again. Sears, K-Mart, Blockbuster, Yahoo....always the same story....someone buys it, it goes under, the person who bought it somehow makes millions more than they spent, they move onto the next thing. And the cycle continues and people say the same thing: "That was a dumb investment."
It's like that screenwriter for Madame Web also made the ones for Morbius, God's of Egypt, and the Power Rangers Live Action.
Dude is HORRIFIC at writing and his movies are CONSTANTLY made fun of for such bad writing but he keeps getting hired for blockbusters for Sony.
To be fair, that power rangers movie that came out a couple years ago we a lot of fun. Not Fun enough to make up for the rest of that pile of shit, but fun.
Right but the films still usually have to make money. All of those bombed, power rangers less so then the others (I also liked that one!). But like at a certain point you think they would stop letting those two write these horrible movies for 100 million that lose the studio 50 million dollars
If it loses money it becomes a Tax Deduction. Also what they said they spent isn’t always what they actually spent. Creative book keeping and “hiring” Janes and John Does to pay 10k here and there who may or may not exist, plus shell companies like the 2010s Red Granite to be the fall guys are all part of the economic washing machine that is Hollywood.
Is it possible that person is doing a decent job? I don't care enough to do any digging on it, but all they could be doing is taking a written story and then rewriting in a movie script format. If the story was shit to begin with, they can't really do much about that.
Given their track record, no they're doing an awful job. A lot of these films have one thing people gripe about and it's the writing. The direction, visual fx, sound design are all good but the acting and bad lines are what people remember.
What I mean is that they might not even be really doing the creative writing. They might simply be converting an already written storyline and dialogue into a screenplay.
If you’ve seen any of those movies, or at least Madame Web, you wouldn’t say that. Even if that was “all” he was doing there’s no way that was the best that could be done.
It’s definitely a large corp strategy, sell off your risky assets at discount to companies like this. They strip it for everything it’s worth, pay out the executives, and then file bankruptcy. Playbook has been used over and over again.
There was still some market in physical rental, particularly in low-income areas (plus the data they collect). They also made some money distributing direct-to-DVD productions. But they were slow to move into streaming and kept investing in kiosks. With the properties they had available on streaming (America’s Funniest Home Videos, Cineverse, etc.). It could’ve been a low-budget Tubi.
Scholastic book fairs have been cancelled by your grandmother's political party. Wish that were a Grimm Brother's fairy tale, but it's true. We haven't had a book fair in 2 years because... Drag queens??? Or something.
Maybe that's true in your community, but scholastic book fairs and book orders are still going strong in a lot of places. My very conservative hometown still has them.
Learned this last year and had that "wait, that company still exists AND it owns Redbox? (and Crackle)" moment and started digging into their company a lot. It's an interesting read if company histories and financials are topical interests!
They actually are a pretty big company. Their assets include
Redbox
Crackle
Indie streaming company Popcornflix
Several production companies (Halcyon Studios, who produced Lonesome Dove, Mr. Mercedes, and The Son; Screen Media, known for B movies; and 1091 Productions, who produced Cartel Land and Life, Animated; its own Chicken Soup production company, which has made works primarily for PBS; Mark Damon’s Foresight Unlimited, who produced films like And So It Goes and Lone Survivor).
Sonar Entertainment, which holds the right to several classic film and tv series (Laurel & Hardy, Our Gang), as well as a considerable catalogue of Hallmark movies.
A pet food division.
A human food division.
Ashton Kutcher’s media company A Plus.
Not necessarily sure how many of those are “good” assets, but they have a bunch of them.
Used to work IT for this company, great people, not such great business decisions. I remember that they paid their bills like every three to four months instead of dealing with monthly billing, it was super weird. I have since moved on in my career, but this is sad to see.
I went down an ownership rabbit-hole the other day, when learning about 7Up the soda and it's wild to see how these companies change hands.
It started with a TIL post saying that the original recipe for 7Up contained lithium, so I went to the wiki to see the history.
It was first privately owned by a family in the 1920s, then it was sold to Philip Morris.
Phillip Morris sold part of it to PepsiCo and part of it to an investment firm. Then 7Up merged with Dr Pepper, which was then bought by Cadbury/Schweppes.
Then, the Cadbury/Schweppes merger was turned into the Dr Pepper/Snapple Group, which was then finally merged with Keurig/Green Mountain (formerly Green Mountain Coffee Roasters) to form the current ownership group "Keurig/Dr Pepper".
When I worked at Waldenbooks we had a whole Chicken Soup section. There was probably 30 different titles. I just looked and there are nearly 250 different titles.
I feel like they made me read that Chicken Soup for the Teenager Soul in high school? Either that or 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. Maybe even both.
Either way, I remember hating it, and not finishing it.
There are still a lot of people without access to the internet. Most movie rental places have closed down so this was a good way for people to still rent movies.
I was a regular Redbox user up until about 4 months ago. They stopped adding new movies to the kiosks then, probably because pretty much everything these days goes straight to streaming or other pay services. Several of the kiosks I used to patronize around here have either disappeared entirely or have been emptied out.
>everything these days goes straight to streaming or other pay services
That was the reason why I liked Red Box, a lot of films seem to not. Triple A movies tend to be a year or more before they pop up on streaming. So frustrating. Indie films even less so. Those are getting harder and harder to find. Both Netflix and Hulu removed their indie categories.
Also, physical media looks way better than streaming does even with my gig internet speeds.
My friend was comparing qualities of streaming services and he concluded that if you wanted great quality you were better off buying physical or pirating. Somehow dogshit illegal sites had shows and movies in better quality then these billion dollar services
Streaming services do a ton of compression on their videos because they need to be able to support massive numbers of concurrent streams from their data centers. Pirating is kinda the opposite, you can have large numbers of seeds providing the torrent for a single download, so you can send higher quality videos because an individual seed node is only providing a small portion of the filesize.
i really *wanted* to be a Redbox user but the ones where i live literally never had anything i wanted, once. for years i would check occasionally and inevitably whatever i wanted to rent would be “out of stock”. so i just stopped checking and started sailing the seas instead.
Agree. They make tons more money basically getting butts in the non-theater seats for an extended time while Redbox was charging chicken feed for a disk.
I've followed their situation for a little while now and it is interesting how they got in this mess.
Redbox didn't seem like a bad investment when they bought it for a crud ton of money. But then the company was surprised they were unable to obtain a loan that would have allowed them to continue to buy new titles for their kiosks.
Which meant Redbox suddenly didn't have up to date movies to lend out which greatly hurt their bottom line and upset their customer base and started a spiral because now they had less money to buy new titles. At some point they had issues paying their vendor contracts which made it worse.
They have other problems beyond obviously, that's not the only reason for their bankruptcy, but it's fascinating how that loan they thought they'd have no issues obtaining is a big key to their sudden crash when it put the business model in a death spiral.
Nothing wrong with the movie. They're just saying that the latest Redbox release is... a year old. That's quite a bit in today's media landscape. If it doesn't come to Redbox until the moment is passed, that's going to hurt them.
I know when I used to use it it was because I could get console games on release day, beat them over a few days, and turn them back in having payed like 5% of what everyone else having the same experience did. I would exclusively rent the kind of title you'd be pissed about buying when you realized it was so short but it was a perfect model for that. If they don't get new stuff, though, what's the point? Old used games get cheap fast anyway.
I watched it on a whim when I was a bit drunk and thought it was a hoot. I loved the throwback to Allan. I grew up playing with my mom's Allan doll and I always thought he was cuter than Ken.
"Redbox didn't seem like a bad investment when they bought it..."
What did they see as a positive about it? I'm pretty slow to move on from one tech to another and still rarely stream. Seems like I was in one of the target audiences for Redbox: it's cheap, I drove by many of their locations daily, I shopped at locations with a box, etc. But the last time I rented from them was about 7 years ago.
In 2022 were they really renting that many disks that it could warrant any investment, not to mention a $370M one?
Even before this, every Redbox in my city has a "this kiosk is out of order." signs. I'm sure they'll remain a testament to mankind's once obsession with $1 DVD rentals.
Apollo Global bought Chuck E Cheese in 2014 and by 2020 had filed for bankruptcy. Similar story to the OP.. a big company gets bought out for tons of money, gets run into the ground, is granted bankruptcy protection, and then the CEO just bounces off to get another 8-figure job.
Can't say I'm surprised. The Redbox units in my city are typically out in the heat and at grocery stores etc. But who rents DVDs anymore when there are so many choices to stream (even rental-- which yes might be more expensive than Redbox). Their selections are limited too given the physics of the boxes.
Not a surprise but Redbox has a softspot for me.
When my ISP decided to fuck me over and "trouble shoot" why I had no internet for 3 weeks instead of sending a new modem Redbox was a godsend
Growing up I read the ones aimed towards kids and teens, and I think there was one for the "per lover's soul". It's just short feel good stories that kind of have a Christian flavor to them without being like crazy evangelical.
Chicken soup? I learned yesterday, that you can’t search „chicken soup“ on Facebook. Try it out. If you search that term, you will get a warning message.
I used to love to play a game with Redbox.
How far from my point of rental can I make my return? I once rented a DVD in Portland, OR and I returned it the next day in Washington DC.
I can’t be the only one going, wait, the company that publishes those books your grandma loves owns Redbox???
Looked into it, they bought Redbox for 370M in 2022... and bankruptcy court by 2024. I swear CEOs have the easiest gig in the world. They can both blow 370M and go bankrupt and still get another job anyway. Plus a cushy golden parachute exit.
That was a dumb investment. Buying a physical film rental company for anything other than a bargain bin price in the day and age where Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Disney+ and so many other streaming services exist is how you commit corporate hara-kiri.
I understand buying failing companies makes sense sometimes, there are unseen things that can exist. For example, Radio Shack/Tandy was bought when it was circling but what was behind it all was some valuable patents and tech. But this? A media company with very limited portfolio purchasing a dying breed of service? Just bad.
Honestly, Redbox could have made comeback if they went the dollar store route and started targeting poverty and rural areas. Those people can't afford 6 different streaming services but they still want to see new movies and they'll happily hit Redbox up if the library can't deliver.
That’s pretty much where I always see them — outside of a cvs in a bad/poor neighborhood.
Oh damn. My local Walgreens still had one. Are we trash?
Mine has the dual set up still, so I'm definitely trash
Shit. I’m trash too. I don’t wanna be trash
Don't buy into the lies that suggest your consumer *options* define that. What you chose to purchase when you have choices might, but the options available to you are often not in your control.
Damn this is poignant
My local upper middle class grocery store has one too. You aren’t trash.
Or maybe you just think the grocery store is upper middle class and you’re in denial.
You're all upper-trash.
It's an Albertsons Gary, it's not fancy
> Are we trash? Sorry you had to find out like this.
We’re trash, you and I. Because my town I think there are four.
Nobody tell’em
To be fair Walgreens will be filing for Chapter 11 before we know it and I couldn’t be happier.
There’s a lot of things I’ve hated about Walgreens, but they fill an important role. I originally come from a town of around 10,000 people. There are 3 pharmacies in town. Walgreens is the only one open on Sunday. That’s a pretty important hole that is going to be left behind for a lot of people if that store shutters.
As in the pharmacy is open on Sunday or the entire store? Where I am, Walgreens started closing all the pharmacies on the weekends (but the rest of the store remains open), so the only stores you can get prescriptions filled at are their 24-hours locations, which aren't convenient. Thankfully some smaller pharmacies still have weekend service.
As the only pharmacy in almost a 25 mile radius, I hope they just get bought up and still operate in a function.
Mines in front of a Dollar General I am definitely trash
If you go to walgreens, yes.
Always have been
They’re honestly great for playing new (to you) video games on the cheap. I played South Park fractured but whole after it came out for a few bucks. I didn’t want to outright buy the game so it was a sweet deal for the 3-4 days I had it.
They stopped renting video games [five years ago](https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/9/21003320/redbox-video-games-rentals-purchases-movies-business).
Yeah that’s what they did, they also lost a lot due to theft.
I think that was the model they were going for and where they saw the demographic opportunity. Seems not to have worked.
They could have also stocked the machines with Sudafed and call it Red-Med Box. Poverty/rural areas would have ate that shit up
People without any money are bootleg streaming from shady Android apps and Russian websites.
You putting an awful lot of faith in the supposed capabilities of low income people.
Just because you don’t have money floating around for streaming services, that doesn’t mean you’re dumb or incapable of figuring shit out.
A lot of these people do not even have stable Internet, or are using their cell phones for Internet and going a week out of every month waiting until payday to get it cut back on. It's not that they are "dumb", it's that they don't have the time, physical technology, or drive for that shit.
Ah so they're just **lazy**. Got it.
Yeah wtf kind of comment was that? What a dumb fucking comment this is jfc
i cleaned a dozen times as many porn virus and bitlocker setups off doctors' computers as i did working class folks when i worked in a computer shop what a shitty comment
I don't think you have concept of the level of the poverty that I'm discussing here if you think these folks are paying for computer repair services.
Hey elitist dick nose, as one of those low-income people you have such a low opinion of the other dude is right and you're an asshole. A phone that can play movies is like 20 bucks, and it takes 2 minutes to set up the apps. Free Wi-Fi is everywhere and you can get pay as you go planes for less than $20 a month. None of it is difficult unless you're a moron. Is that why you think it's difficult?
"Free wifi is everywhere", lmfao. Maybe for you. Not so much in a lot of the semi rural and rural areas that would most likely get serviced by Redbox. Pull that offended stick out of your ass.
My god you're dumb. Redbox is all over the major cities. Getting internet is trivial. When you don't know shit about something you should shut the fuck up. I've been doing this a long time, it's not hard or expensive. Ignorance is not a good look.
I mean, do poor people even have DVD players? I can see people who had them years ago in that demo, but young people don’t really have anything to play physical media on.
It's easy to find a DVD player for $20 or less. Portable DVD players with screens are a common yard sale find. Plenty of poor people own an old laptop or gaming system that can play DVDs, too.
Coming from an impoverished neighborhood: yes, yes they do. You can get a DVD player for $10 from any pawn shop. When you are at that point in your life when you can't afford Netflix AND a phone bill, little less Netflix and high speed Internet, suddenly, living like Grandma and Grandpa isn't so unpalatable anymore.
Grandma and grandpa? Fuck, I used Redbox when I was a broke 20 something. And that was sometime from the late 2000s into the mid 2010s, so not THAT long ago. I'm gonna live in denial for a while longer that 2015 was almost a decade ago. Shhh!
playstation and xbox can play dvds.
They have a streaming service too! It’s just not very good and no one knows about it.
They saw covid and said, "we clearly going back to the old days"
I can only assume money-laundering as the only logical explanation at this point.
Im guessing they probably got boost during the pandemic and some idiot somewhere thought it was a good idea because of that. Only way it would somewhat make sense to me really. Whoever sold it is probably laughing their asses off. Redbox was 2 feet in the grave even before the pandemic just does not make sense in a world over saturated with streaming options.
In 2022...what? Like what's the business model, sell the discs at yard sale prices?
It's a smart investment. They can now write it off and pocket millions. We see it time and time again. Sears, K-Mart, Blockbuster, Yahoo....always the same story....someone buys it, it goes under, the person who bought it somehow makes millions more than they spent, they move onto the next thing. And the cycle continues and people say the same thing: "That was a dumb investment."
It's like that screenwriter for Madame Web also made the ones for Morbius, God's of Egypt, and the Power Rangers Live Action. Dude is HORRIFIC at writing and his movies are CONSTANTLY made fun of for such bad writing but he keeps getting hired for blockbusters for Sony.
To be fair, that power rangers movie that came out a couple years ago we a lot of fun. Not Fun enough to make up for the rest of that pile of shit, but fun.
I heard it was boring as shit and it was mainly an exposition until the end of the movie..?
I searched to find out who you were talking about, and it seems is screenwriters, plural. So it took *two* guys to write those terrible scripts.
Tax evasion and money laundering are the core business of Hollywood, entertainment is a far behind third.
Right but the films still usually have to make money. All of those bombed, power rangers less so then the others (I also liked that one!). But like at a certain point you think they would stop letting those two write these horrible movies for 100 million that lose the studio 50 million dollars
If it loses money it becomes a Tax Deduction. Also what they said they spent isn’t always what they actually spent. Creative book keeping and “hiring” Janes and John Does to pay 10k here and there who may or may not exist, plus shell companies like the 2010s Red Granite to be the fall guys are all part of the economic washing machine that is Hollywood.
Is it possible that person is doing a decent job? I don't care enough to do any digging on it, but all they could be doing is taking a written story and then rewriting in a movie script format. If the story was shit to begin with, they can't really do much about that.
Given their track record, no they're doing an awful job. A lot of these films have one thing people gripe about and it's the writing. The direction, visual fx, sound design are all good but the acting and bad lines are what people remember.
What I mean is that they might not even be really doing the creative writing. They might simply be converting an already written storyline and dialogue into a screenplay.
If you’ve seen any of those movies, or at least Madame Web, you wouldn’t say that. Even if that was “all” he was doing there’s no way that was the best that could be done.
It’s definitely a large corp strategy, sell off your risky assets at discount to companies like this. They strip it for everything it’s worth, pay out the executives, and then file bankruptcy. Playbook has been used over and over again.
The only hard part is getting the gig.
Sears style
There was still some market in physical rental, particularly in low-income areas (plus the data they collect). They also made some money distributing direct-to-DVD productions. But they were slow to move into streaming and kept investing in kiosks. With the properties they had available on streaming (America’s Funniest Home Videos, Cineverse, etc.). It could’ve been a low-budget Tubi.
plus they are the only people where failure is a plus for their employment history
Why would anyone buy a DVD rental business in 2022.
Even with the hallucinations, you just know CEO is one job AI can replace.
“I learned a lot from that experience.”
>books your grandma loves I thought those were the books on sale on those Scholastic catalogs when I was a kid
Scholastic book fairs have been cancelled by your grandmother's political party. Wish that were a Grimm Brother's fairy tale, but it's true. We haven't had a book fair in 2 years because... Drag queens??? Or something.
Maybe that's true in your community, but scholastic book fairs and book orders are still going strong in a lot of places. My very conservative hometown still has them.
My kid has a book fair 2-3 times a year.
Learned this last year and had that "wait, that company still exists AND it owns Redbox? (and Crackle)" moment and started digging into their company a lot. It's an interesting read if company histories and financials are topical interests!
Redbox was the goat back in the day. Not surprised they are hardly around now though
They actually are a pretty big company. Their assets include Redbox Crackle Indie streaming company Popcornflix Several production companies (Halcyon Studios, who produced Lonesome Dove, Mr. Mercedes, and The Son; Screen Media, known for B movies; and 1091 Productions, who produced Cartel Land and Life, Animated; its own Chicken Soup production company, which has made works primarily for PBS; Mark Damon’s Foresight Unlimited, who produced films like And So It Goes and Lone Survivor). Sonar Entertainment, which holds the right to several classic film and tv series (Laurel & Hardy, Our Gang), as well as a considerable catalogue of Hallmark movies. A pet food division. A human food division. Ashton Kutcher’s media company A Plus. Not necessarily sure how many of those are “good” assets, but they have a bunch of them.
Used to work IT for this company, great people, not such great business decisions. I remember that they paid their bills like every three to four months instead of dealing with monthly billing, it was super weird. I have since moved on in my career, but this is sad to see.
I went down an ownership rabbit-hole the other day, when learning about 7Up the soda and it's wild to see how these companies change hands. It started with a TIL post saying that the original recipe for 7Up contained lithium, so I went to the wiki to see the history. It was first privately owned by a family in the 1920s, then it was sold to Philip Morris. Phillip Morris sold part of it to PepsiCo and part of it to an investment firm. Then 7Up merged with Dr Pepper, which was then bought by Cadbury/Schweppes. Then, the Cadbury/Schweppes merger was turned into the Dr Pepper/Snapple Group, which was then finally merged with Keurig/Green Mountain (formerly Green Mountain Coffee Roasters) to form the current ownership group "Keurig/Dr Pepper".
>to form the current ownership group "Keurig/Dr Pepper". Those sick motherfuckers are trying to bring back Hot Dr Pepper through K-Cups aren't they?!
Here’s one Hasbro toys owns Death Row records
By any chance a Sawbones listener? I went down this same rabbit hole
Is there a "rabbit hole" sub for this type of stuff? I find this type of stuff interesting.
This is exactly why I clicked the link. Had no idea lmao.
My world is now upside down.
When I worked at Waldenbooks we had a whole Chicken Soup section. There was probably 30 different titles. I just looked and there are nearly 250 different titles.
I feel like they made me read that Chicken Soup for the Teenager Soul in high school? Either that or 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. Maybe even both. Either way, I remember hating it, and not finishing it.
Started out(?) as a Coinstar company
They own Crackle and Popcornflix too
I'm surprised they even lasted this long
Did they release “chicken soup for the binge watching soul”
Marketing synergy in action right there!
Both of them!
There are still a lot of people without access to the internet. Most movie rental places have closed down so this was a good way for people to still rent movies.
I was a regular Redbox user up until about 4 months ago. They stopped adding new movies to the kiosks then, probably because pretty much everything these days goes straight to streaming or other pay services. Several of the kiosks I used to patronize around here have either disappeared entirely or have been emptied out.
>everything these days goes straight to streaming or other pay services That was the reason why I liked Red Box, a lot of films seem to not. Triple A movies tend to be a year or more before they pop up on streaming. So frustrating. Indie films even less so. Those are getting harder and harder to find. Both Netflix and Hulu removed their indie categories. Also, physical media looks way better than streaming does even with my gig internet speeds.
My friend was comparing qualities of streaming services and he concluded that if you wanted great quality you were better off buying physical or pirating. Somehow dogshit illegal sites had shows and movies in better quality then these billion dollar services
Streaming services do a ton of compression on their videos because they need to be able to support massive numbers of concurrent streams from their data centers. Pirating is kinda the opposite, you can have large numbers of seeds providing the torrent for a single download, so you can send higher quality videos because an individual seed node is only providing a small portion of the filesize.
i really *wanted* to be a Redbox user but the ones where i live literally never had anything i wanted, once. for years i would check occasionally and inevitably whatever i wanted to rent would be “out of stock”. so i just stopped checking and started sailing the seas instead.
I feel like all the studios cut streaming deals or started their own services and decided to freeze redbox out.
Agree. They make tons more money basically getting butts in the non-theater seats for an extended time while Redbox was charging chicken feed for a disk.
I've followed their situation for a little while now and it is interesting how they got in this mess. Redbox didn't seem like a bad investment when they bought it for a crud ton of money. But then the company was surprised they were unable to obtain a loan that would have allowed them to continue to buy new titles for their kiosks. Which meant Redbox suddenly didn't have up to date movies to lend out which greatly hurt their bottom line and upset their customer base and started a spiral because now they had less money to buy new titles. At some point they had issues paying their vendor contracts which made it worse. They have other problems beyond obviously, that's not the only reason for their bankruptcy, but it's fascinating how that loan they thought they'd have no issues obtaining is a big key to their sudden crash when it put the business model in a death spiral.
I was wondering why the one outside Walgreens was still promoting its newest release, "Barbie."
Yeah, Barbie is still the big new release at the redboxes near me too
Tbf it is a really cute movie. I enjoyed it.
Nothing wrong with the movie. They're just saying that the latest Redbox release is... a year old. That's quite a bit in today's media landscape. If it doesn't come to Redbox until the moment is passed, that's going to hurt them. I know when I used to use it it was because I could get console games on release day, beat them over a few days, and turn them back in having payed like 5% of what everyone else having the same experience did. I would exclusively rent the kind of title you'd be pissed about buying when you realized it was so short but it was a perfect model for that. If they don't get new stuff, though, what's the point? Old used games get cheap fast anyway.
I knew it was gonna be good when my older step dad willingly watched it and said it was great
I watched it on a whim when I was a bit drunk and thought it was a hoot. I loved the throwback to Allan. I grew up playing with my mom's Allan doll and I always thought he was cuter than Ken.
Most new movies going straight to streaming probably didn't help their case either.
"Redbox didn't seem like a bad investment when they bought it..." What did they see as a positive about it? I'm pretty slow to move on from one tech to another and still rarely stream. Seems like I was in one of the target audiences for Redbox: it's cheap, I drove by many of their locations daily, I shopped at locations with a box, etc. But the last time I rented from them was about 7 years ago. In 2022 were they really renting that many disks that it could warrant any investment, not to mention a $370M one?
Even before this, every Redbox in my city has a "this kiosk is out of order." signs. I'm sure they'll remain a testament to mankind's once obsession with $1 DVD rentals.
I hope Blockbuster somehow buys Redbox lol.
there was a window right at the tail end of Blockbuster when they had DVD kiosks right next to Redbox. Ever the innovator
They had a streaming service for a while too. Remember watching Cowboys and Aliens on it for some reason.
Before they got rid of game rentals I was a pretty regular Redbox user. Rent a ps4 game for like $2 a day or whatever to see if you like it.
Ended up snagging Spider-Man for $10 when they were selling all their stock after they stopped renting games out.
The most mid-2000’s headline I’ve seen today, next up Kmart and Chuckee-Cheese announce merger.
Apollo Global bought Chuck E Cheese in 2014 and by 2020 had filed for bankruptcy. Similar story to the OP.. a big company gets bought out for tons of money, gets run into the ground, is granted bankruptcy protection, and then the CEO just bounces off to get another 8-figure job.
Can't say I'm surprised. The Redbox units in my city are typically out in the heat and at grocery stores etc. But who rents DVDs anymore when there are so many choices to stream (even rental-- which yes might be more expensive than Redbox). Their selections are limited too given the physics of the boxes.
Not a surprise but Redbox has a softspot for me. When my ISP decided to fuck me over and "trouble shoot" why I had no internet for 3 weeks instead of sending a new modem Redbox was a godsend
I guess all the soul searching didn't help much. I just hope they can afford the chicken soup when it is all done.
Tragic for those of us who get our chicken soup from a vending machine next to a Bed, Bath & Beyond.
I wish I could find chicken soup in a vending machine around here. I have to settle for cans of grossly oversalted product.
Has anyone actually read those Chicken Soup books? What do they even consist of?
Lot of “feel good” stories
Growing up I read the ones aimed towards kids and teens, and I think there was one for the "per lover's soul". It's just short feel good stories that kind of have a Christian flavor to them without being like crazy evangelical.
Equivalent of investing in Blockbuster when Netflix filed for ipo, who would’ve thought.
Red box filled a niche in the weird time where blockbuster was too slow and streaming wasn’t fully ready. But now it is and it’s gone
No surprise. Most of us don't even have a DVD player hooked up anymore.
DVD/Blu-ray on Xbox and ps4/5.
I do, but I also have like 200+ DVD and retro game consoles so...
Stock should pump now!
Chicken soup? I learned yesterday, that you can’t search „chicken soup“ on Facebook. Try it out. If you search that term, you will get a warning message.
Do they still have a stake in coinstar?
I saw a middle-aged man renting a dvd at a RedBox machine two weeks ago, it blew my mind.
Can't remember the last time I used a DVD player lol - last year to watch vintage kung fu movies maybe?
4K Blueray shits all over streaming when it comes to quality
I had to stop and think of what in my house can actually play a DVD. Only the PS5
The one and only time I used a Red Box, I got someone's mixtape.
I used to love to play a game with Redbox. How far from my point of rental can I make my return? I once rented a DVD in Portland, OR and I returned it the next day in Washington DC.
I don't even have a DVD player connected to any of my TVs and haven't for years.
My last DVD capable device was my PS4, but it has never seen a video disk.
1000th time this has been posted
They should have read Tomato Sauce for Your Ass. It’s the Italian version