Mr. Movie Goes to the Deadpool in Style

It is only a matter of time for all of them including Blockbuster. Broadband is about to take over.

I read this post with a very heavy heart.

Adam Sandler is funny.

BLOGTO PLEASE DON'T DELETE THIS COMMENT.

Or that Adam Sandler HAS NEVER BEEN funny.

Kenny: Blockbuster received funding but are also closing a substantial number of stores to scale back their costs and will not be filing any time soon.

In Canada though, they remain profitable and are not under the same microscope with their finances.

I do think that their brand is obsolete though. They have been unable to stay ahead of trends and technology and unless they come up with something earth shattering that Zip/Netflicks can't copy, they will not be around for much longer.

Happy Gilmore is a funny movie.

It's a sad day to see any of these independents go under; however, video's demise has been predicted since 1987 when a 'video on demand' project was launched in Santa Catarina, California. Blockbuster's parent company spun Blockbuster off a few years because they could see the writing on the wall: 5,000 sq ft stores with high overheads will not be able to make it going forward. Some of the smaller, better stocked independents may survive, sort of like the used LP places that have been kept alive, tucked away in dark little corners. Small towns don't have Blockbusters or Rogers, which is the real enemy to these independents - even though these independents are often better stocked and better staffed than Rogers or Blockbuster.
But, who knows? Video stores would have died a long time ago if the wholesale price of movies (VHS) didn't come down from their $100+ peak in the late '90s to the $12-20 range for a typical DVD today. No way these little places could have survived if one copy had to 'turn' 22-25' times just to break even!

No, actually the major studios tried to block the betamax and VHS systems, arguing that the machines would only be used for recording copyrighted material. When they lost that battle, they then tried to prevent rental outlets from being able to charge for renting them. It was a titanic battle in the early '80s when the wholesale cost of movies was in the $20 range.
When the studios lost that battle, too, they realized the only way they could participate in the 'lost' revenue was by inflating the initial cost to the $80 range and then higher as the market would bare. It had no reflection on the actual quality of the cassettes themselves. Later, pay per rental systems (like Rentrak) were tried with varied success, but $100 became the norm in Canada. Ironically, most movies don't make money until released on VHS (or DVD, as the case now is), but initially the studios did not see it that way.

The game companies tried the same thing and met with better success: they did win the legal battle against the photocopying of the instructions, which the Courts viewed differently.

By the late '80s, people began to collect movies and the studios saw merit to a 2-tier price structure: 'rental priced' at $100 and then 'sell-thru' at $12-$22, generally 4-8 months later. Some movies (generally Disney and Warner kids stuff) would come out at the lesser price to make up for in volume. E.T. is prime example of that: when Spielberg finally released it, it sold several million copies, rather than the normal 2-400,000 for a successful 'rental priced' title.