Hot Trailer: ‘The Great Gatsby’ 
How Did Women Pilot Writers Fare For 2012? 
Disney Quits Snow White Film ‘Order Of The … 
Cannes Planning Surprise Screening Of Non-Fest Films; … 
ReelzChannel Acquires U.S. Rights To ‘Pillars’ … 
Investors Unfriend Facebook As SEC Investigates IPO … 
Cash Windfalls For WME Agents, Assistants 
A&E IndieFilms Sets ‘Happy Valley,’ … 
Hot Cannes Property: Natalie Portman, Lynne Ramsay Team On … 
Brad Pitt Hits Cannes With ‘Killing Them … 
CNN Hits 20-Year Weekday Primetime Low 
Longtime TV Exec Rod Perth Named NATPE President & CEO 
RATINGS RAT RACE: ‘House’ Ends Run On High-Ish … 
Does Cable News Clarify Or Confuse The Public’s … 
Mark Burnett’s Company Launches Scripted Unit, Taps … 
‘Mary Mother Of Christ’ In Lionsgate Deal 
Icon UK Group Joins ‘The Butler’; Forest … 
HBO Developing Comedy Series Starring Catherine Keener And … 
Legendary’s Thomas Tull Among Just 3 Contenders … 
Harvey Weinstein Unveils ‘The Master’, … 
Cable Execs Warn That Dish Network’s Ad-Zapping DVR … 
As expected, Redbox is suing Warner Home Video over its demand for a 28-day window before it makes available low-cost DVDs to the kiosks. But what really warms my heart is the way Redbox President Mitch Lowe is using not just anti-trust law but also a PR offensive to fight back against the power, influence, and unlimited resources of the Hollywood studios and the cartel they’ve formed. (Hey, Hollywood guilds, you could learn a thing or two from these Redbox guys…) Redbox has now set up savelowcostdvds.com to explain its populist message aimed at the 150 million consumers who shop where the Redbox kiosks are located, ”Don’t Let a few movie studios prevent you from seeing the latest DVDs at an affordable price”.
Here’s the latest Redbox lawsuit:
Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. – Redbox Automated Retail, LLC, filed suit in Delaware Federal Court against Warner Home Video on Tuesday, August 18, 2009, to protect consumers’ rights to access new release DVDs. Redbox filed the action in response to new distribution terms imposed by Warner Home Video that would prohibit redbox from providing consumers access to Warner Home Video titles until at least 28 days after public release.
“Warner Home Video’s actions come at the expense of consumers,” said Mitch Lowe, president, redbox. “Redbox remains committed to providing our customers the new release DVDs they want, where they want and at the low price they want. Standing behind our commitment, redbox will continue to offer our consumers access to all major new releases including Warner Home Video at our more than 15,000 locations nationwide.”
A number of studios also have shown support for redbox. Last week, redbox signed a multi-year distribution agreement with Lionsgate. A similar distribution agreement with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) was reached in July. “Redbox continues to forge winning relationships with a number of studios that increase studio exposure, ensure redbox customers receive access to more titles and support redbox’s commitment to providing consumers timely, convenient and affordable access to new release DVDs,” said Lowe.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
Loading ...
CB
So if it’s not the right price, you’ll steal it. BRILLIANT. I hope you’re consistent in your philosophy. Cause honestly – if you’re not also stealing the nine dollar blueberries from whole foods, you’re a fucking hypocrite.
But I have a question that I think cuts to the heart of the matter:
Is it right to steal movies for your family if you can’t afford to entertain them?
You gotta laugh at Redbox — they are determined to “provide the customers what they want, at the price they want it.” .
What they are determined to do is make a profit. Like WBs. Like any other company.
This is an arm’s length transaction. And if Redbox does not like the terms, they can go down the street, which they have, and get a different deal, for the same product – DVDs. So there is no price gauging (which really only applies to ESSENTIAL items like gas or water). And this is not a restraint of trade – for the same reason — other DVDs are available — so it doesn’t restrict competition. In fact, it does the opposite. Creates an opportunity for another Vendor – Fox, Lionsgate or whoever to cut a better deal.
Ahh the hubris.
This whole thing is weird to think about. I think my generation decided that few things are worth real money and now the movie companies are playing catchup, because the whole scare your ISP, attack your morality, frontload expectations and underestimate EVERY competitor (cable TV, Netflix, RedBox), didn’t do much. I don’t think everything should be free or even all that cheap, but i grew up in a time where people had the option to pay and the studios keep overestimating its effects on high budget movies and underestimating it on lower budget flicks.
All I know is this year sucked for movies so far, but they’re makin more skrill than the last couple years and they know it’s only a matter of time…here’s to clutching at straws. :\
@Waiting for the collapse
you’re a LOT more likely to find a new movie in a RedBox than you are at Blockbuster. plus Blockbuster is 4 bucks for 2 days, which is majorly different from a buck a day.
Redbox steals jobs from real people. With 900 Blockbusters shutting down, that’s about 7000 people out of work. That extra buck or two keeps real people working, and helps our economy. What are you going to do when a machine replaces you? Besides, it’s $1 a day… keep it 4 or 5 days and you pay just as much, if not more, than a video store rental. Let machines rent from machines. I’m going to support my fellow humans and rent from real human beings.
@cb
What?!
-_-
If the studios get say 70 cents on the dollar a rental and 10 people rent it, that’s $7. If they hold it for a month, half won’t ever rent, 2 or 3 will and the other 1 or 2 buy it or have a friend buy it, that’s a good amount more than $7 … It’s just business.
There’s two things the studios fear-
1) Low price rentals HURT DVD sales – who’s going to buy a film for $14.99,or even $9.99 when they can rent it for $1.00 a day.
2) The glut of USED DVDs on the market after 30 days!
i can’t believe how many of you are trying to put forth valid, nay, arguable statements, when you can’t even spell. take a class in english and THEN try to knock someone off their soapbox. as for all of you who think that Redbox is limiting revenue for the studios, chew on this: Redbox has to buy the dvds in the first place in order to rent them. in other words, the only effect a cheap rental fee has is on the renter, not the creator. I mean; honestly, do any of you capitalists even THINK before you post a response?
According to Broadcast and Media, “the five top media CEOs earned on average $26.6 million last year.”
The only movie I’ve seen this summer is District 9, and I snuck in to see it.
But, because I didn’t get caught I did nothing wrong.
That’s capitalism baby!
it is a better idea than the conventional rental process, no late fees, you pay by the day for exactly as many days as you want. after racking up a few $16-20 late fee charges at my local rental place i jumped ship and went to the redbox machines. i wish the local rental stores would adopt a one day rental/charge system. because of the redbox machines i see a lot more films than i normally would, and then in turn blab to friends about them, and they in turn do the same. big corporations fail to see how important customer satisfaction and word of mouth advertising is.
At the video store I work at, we DO charge $1 a day and we do just fine… but I am concerned that machines replacing human people will have a negative impact on the economy. What are you going to do when a machine replaces your job? For your information, if you keep your Redbox DVD 16 days, you will pay $16. Redbox IS a big corporation, and how can you get customer service from a giant soda machine stuffed with scratched up DVDs? REDBOX is just another machine stealing people’s jobs. Next time it might be YOUR job, dummies.
Did you ever think how many people work for Redbox and how hard they have to work while you are talking about ‘stealing peoples jobs’? How can you get customer service you ask? They same way as with credit cards…you call..I don’t see you going off about self serve checkout lines in a grocery store…
I don’t work for the movie industry.
I think many of you are misunderstanding the point of the article/news report.
Warner Bros wants Redbox to wait 28days, then they can start renting the new releases for a $1.
Redbox is upset that they have to wait thus making the consumer upset that they have to wait.
I am sure that WB is wanting the 28days to give Blockbuster a head start in sales–cuz I am sure they get a bigger cut from Blockbuster.
Anyhoo, WB is entitled to do what they want. It sucks, but it is true. Me, I don’t rent from Blockbuster or go to the movies. I go to the kiosks because I like paying $1 a night especially for something that I will not keep. Holding off 28 from obtaining the new releases at the kiosk won’t stop me from still renting from Redbox. I will just have to wait. Saving $3 is worth it.
Who cares? pay what its worth to you. By the way, watching TV / movies / playing video games isn’t actually “living”. Get out and talk to people, anyone can add value to another’s life.
@Hal Jalikakick
If you think that only recently people have been losing jobs in the home video industry, and it’s all Redbox’s fault you’re seriously deluded.
The reason why you and many many others *years* before you lost their jobs was because the Blockbusters, Hollywoods, West Coasts and other chains who got preferential treatment from the conglomerates in the 1990s put the independent mom & pop video rental businesses out of business first. Other than in the tiniest hamlets considered ‘too small’ to locate a chain in, thousands of those businesses in cities and suburbs too numerous to mention are gone forever.
The few mom & pops who are left in the rural areas are challenged by VOD, Netflix & now Redbox, not to mention the preferential pricing & free goods given to the chains which indies rental outlets in marketplaces not serviced by them can never hope to share in. Add in sell-through pricing for tangible home video (first tape, then laserdiscs and now DVDs & Blu-Ray) and electronic (iTunes, Amazon Unboxed, etc) and their time for this world is not long either.
I’m sorry you’re out of work but guess what? The handwriting’s been on that wall since the 1990s. By my calculations you’ve had more than 10 years notice to retool personally for a different career (have you never read any back issues of Video Business?). And I’ve got a ton of friends who either got fired or got out of home video ages ago (and even more refugees from the music biz) so forgive me if it’s hard for me to cry you your own personal river.
The studios are free to bring anti-trust counterclaims regarding predatory pricing by Redbox, but they better be ready to have the books opened up on a lot of their decades old practices. If they were smart they’d settle this with Redbox, but if they don’t they pays their lawyers big money & they takes big chances with the court, especially given the fact that the Obama administration is more interested in looking into anti-competitive practices and judges who find anti-trust are less likely to be reversed at the appellate level and/or have their rulings hollowed out by new legislation.
It’s obvious that studioshill and jared work for Hollywood…
This is just another case where the big studios should have had way more foresight with Redbox (pretty much how Blockbuster thought Netflix was a joke until they hit them where it hurt).
Rather than waiting nearly 5-10 years to adjust their business models (long after other companies are making money at it), maybe they can start bringing in really creative people to work in the marketing departments rather than just a bunch of MBA’s without any street sense???
Curt
Pricing is so wacky because they can’t set the value of their price for a ticket, or Disc, or Download.
When you go to a show, like a Broadway Show or a Rolling Stones Concert, you pay what the ticket price is based on a value set for THAT event. You want to pay $200 for a good Stones Show, that is fine. You want to pass and pay only $20 for a Stones cover band. You want to sneak a recorder in and share it with your friends…well it’s been done.
Well you get my point,
That’s a real market…there is too many middlemen.
Yeah they’re doing a great job at bringing low cost rentals to the masses, but lowering the revenue from DVD rentals is going to eventually lower the budgets on the films. Might as well sue the studios to lower the cost of movie tickets or force the studios to release the titles on free network TV at the same time they’re released in theaters. Frankly, I prefer FX-laden big budget movies and comic book adaptations over contemporary low budget indies and froo-froo romcoms. Harry Potter was better than The Ugly Truth, and it cost 8 times as much to make. Never thought I’d say this, but I hope the studio cartel wins on this one. Save the big budget schlockfest!
Really?
I’d rather studios lower their budgets so interesting movies can be once again made, as opposed to studios draining any sort of creativity from movies because the only competition is the high budget high grossing tripe that we see.
Do you think that Citizen Cane could POSSIBLY have been made today? No; it’s a bizarre movie, it’s not something that appeals to the lowest common denominator and thus would never be able to make up the cost that a high budget movie could.
Movies today are simply flashing lights and spectacles of CG. I’d rather we get fresh stories than an infinite number of sequels (Fast and Furious, Saw) because the first were that successful.
Forget about $1 DVD..Why these Studios not considering Torrents?? Now, we all, at least most of us, do have access to torrents. Even then, many like me still prefer to pay a dollar for the DVD from RedBox! I’m definitely not going to pay $4 in BlockBuster..If the movie is not available in RedBox, I’ll simply go to a torrent site and download a BlueRay Rip version!
I have to agree 100% with StudioSHill. Consumers do not have a right to cheap DVD rentals soon after their release. But the way the courts have been ruling, I would not be surprised to find that Time-Warner and any other media distributors will be told by the courts that “It is in the public interest” to allow consumers access to the DVDs at an affordable price. After all, the whole issue here “access”. What Time-Warner wants it to be able to milk the cash cows before they hit the break-even point. What’s to keep TW from simply saying “We set the value of the DVD for the first 28 days after release”? This ladies and gentlemen is free enterprise. If people go along with it, we can expect movies on DVD 28 days after release for $.99 per night. On the other hand if no one buys the DVDs in the first 28 days, then TW will have to change its policy. This would be “arms length Fair Value” in a free enterprise economy. That is what a willing seller is willing to sell for to a wiling buyer
Sorry studios, but you’re never going to get the same DVD sales numbers you were getting from 1999-2007. The novelty has worn off. I remember when I first got a DVD player I bought a ton of movies, crap like Godzilla (1998) and Bride of Chucky because I had to have the newest DVDs. And of course I had to buy all my old favorites that I had on VHS. But now the novelty has worn off, and the new movies coming out are so bad, who wants to own them? I think I’ve only bought maybe 5 new movies that have been released in the last few years. Most of the DVDs are buy are older films. And sorry but Blu-Ray is catching on, but most people aren’t going to go the VHS-DVD route that they did by buying all the films they had on DVD for Blu-Ray. I think Redbox is a fad anyway. Once digital downloads happen on a large scale, it’ll be gone. It’s got a 5-8 year lifespan at most. Anybody who invests in that company for the long term will probably get burned since Redbox ain’t built to last.
Is everyone out there forgetting that almost all the people i know are out of work, took high pay cuts to keep there jobs or are working a low paying job just to have 1. In this economy i don’t have 25.00 to take myself and my nephew to the movies. Nor do any of my friends. There are alot of people out there just like us. Feeding us is much more important. The $1 redbox gives a chance to still have a movie night without breaking the bank. So go Redbox.
There shouldn’t be market forces at play here at all. Since the 1600′s and the Law of the First Sale, no Common Law country has ever allowed someone to extract royalties on transfers and transactions of a physical copy of a copyrighted work. Period. Redbox buys these DVDs, Redbox owns these DVDs, and after the “First Sale,” they don’t owe anybody anything.
Last I checked Warner Brothers wasn’t run by Pablo Escobar. Hollywood is not entitled to run its business along the same lines.
The Redbox VS. Warner Brothers case is now online at the AllRise court – http://bit.ly/421q8d
If Redbox actually had the new release movies I wanted to see, I wouldn’t torrent them.
Market forces are determining the best price as the popularity of Redbox is showing and the decrease in sales for normal video stores BUT Warner Home Video wants to ignore the market and try to cut Redbox out.
Quit ripping me off when I go to the theater and I’ll likely stop copying DVDs/Blu-rays and looking for the most inexpensive way to do it (Netflix, RedBox, etc).
Just look at the cost of popcorn at the theater…that alone pisses me off enough to bypass the big screen all together. Hell, it is enough for me stab a Hollywood executive in the eyes with a spoon. Yea, I know I should direct that hatred toward the cinema company, but I feel Warner should be looking at that long-time gouging rather than RedBox’s practices now that it is popular…so for me it comes back around to Hollywood.
Anyway, this bickering between the two is pointless…but I will side with RedBox. The conglomerates (including their branches like home video) are now verbatim to the greedy music industry. Thankfully that industry is starting to see the light and give me more options to choose less crap.