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Disney has quietly joined Universal, Fox, and Warner Bros in refusing to provide DVDs to low-cost rental firms including Redbox and Netflix on the day the discs go on sale, Home Media Magazine reports. The unannounced change caught people’s attention this week when Redbox kiosks didn’t have Disney’s John Carter, released on home video this past Tuesday. But those waiting for the financial mega-bomb to hit Redbox — so they’d only have to pay $1.20 a night to see what the fuss was about — won’t have to wait long. The company will simply buy discs from retailers so it can offer them for rental by June 12. “Redbox has always worked with Disney on a per title basis, without a contract,” the Coinstar-owned company says. “We will be sourcing John Carter through alternative means.” Redbox began to do the same thing with Warner Bros releases this year after the studio said it would double the delay period to 56 days before it would offer wholesale terms for its rental discs. Redbox has agreed to terms with Universal and Fox that include a 28-day delay. Other studios including Paramount and Lionsgate provide home videos the same day they hit retail shelves. Studios disagree over whether Redbox’s low-cost rentals cannibalize DVD sales, which have been plummeting, or enhance consumer interest in films. Disney CEO Bob Iger told analysts in February that “we are in discussions to go to the 28-day window.” Although he acknowledged that Redbox could buy Disney discs elsewhere, he added that an effort to protect DVD sales “would be a wise thing for us to do.”
Redbox Will Rent ‘John Carter’ DVDs Soon Despite Disney’s New 28-Day Delay
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Get with it Hollywood! Redbox rocks! It’s the only place I rent my blu-rays. The kiosks are everywhere!
The delay is getting out of hand, so it really doesn’t benefit Redbox or Netflix. It would be better just to offer less DVDs by the percentage of the so called discounted price they receive for the 56 day window.
Studios should make the window reasonable so Redbox and others would volunteer to keep it, because in the end Redbox has every right to rent the DVDs when they become available to the public, if they’re willing to pay the same price.
Sorry, guys, I’m ying and yang on this one. I respect the work and creativity that goes into film (-I’m in the creative end of things myself), so I will buy what I want to see and keep on DVD and Blu Ray while the minor and marginal releases that I wish to check out I will borrow from the area community college library.
The obvious solution is to add a section to the next SOPA attempt making it illegal for consumers, like me, to rent DVDs for those first 28 days after release. Because if it’s against the law, I’ll be sure to buy a lot more DVDs and Blu-rays.
Meanwhile, has anyone seen my BitTorrent icon?
We already have a law that covers this, it’s called the First Sale Doctrine.
Since the advent of home video over thirty years ago, the studios have fought against the video store, despite those same video stores doing more to benefit Hollywood than any other delivery means.
We have put up with so much crap from the studios whilst making them rich. This is just one more bad idea from them.
Redbox and those studios should just agree to charge more, say 3.00 instead of this ridiculous window which doesn’t make me want to go out and buy DVDs unless I loved them in the movie theater or loved it after renting it
That makes no sense as Redbox would then have to pass those costs onto the consumer. On a “per night” basis, this would make Redbox less enticing than renting from Netflix.
This is actually saving Redbox money. They are getting the movies in 3 weeks before they would have been able to with the 28 day delay. They get the rental $$’s faster. Plus most stores have these new releases on sale the first week so it isn’t costing much more than what they were paying in the first place.
If I did not see it in the thwarts I can certainly wait a few more weeks. The reason I rent from RB is because of the low rental fee which is misleading because I usually keep it for more than one night but now with the unannounced removal of machines from locations it is becoming inconvenient.
two words: bit torrent
The real problem here is that Redbox isn’t revenue-sharing. They’re basically like your buddy that buys a DVD and then loans it out to everyone. That disc finds itself in 4 or 5 different homes. Maybe 10-20 people see it. And the studio gets nothing but that initial revenue from the disc purchase (which is shared with the retailer – Target, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc.) But what Redbox is doing, is buying that $20 disc, loaning it out for a buck a pop, for an indefinite period of time, and the studio sees none of that additional revenue. Rental businesses should be treated no differently than theater owners. If they want to sell the ability to watch a film, they should share the revenue from those viewings.
So rental car companies show give part of their profits to the Auto Manufaturers when they lend their cars out to people? How about all the rent to own stores and equipment rental businesses. See Hollywood thinks it is special and needs special rules so they can wring as much money out of people as they can.
It doesnt work that way.
Clearly you don’t understand the first thing about economics. A car, a house, almost all other things that are rented are first SOLD for more than they cost to make. I.E. a house is built for $500,00 and sold by the contractor for $750,000. The creator of a good makes a profit at the start when they sell while the renter has to go in significant debt in order to make money. Home rentals don’t turn a proft for 30 years. In hollywood, we sell our goods for LESS than the price to make them. Profits are crowd sourced across millions of people that consume the product. When a studio sells a dvd to RedBox, RedBox is $20 in debt while the studio is still millions of dollars in debt, theoretically. Content Creators need to sell millions of DVD’s and tickets to make their money back, they don’t get it all up front from one sale. It is far too easy for the DVD renter to make money while the studio spends years making money back on some films. The economics of almost every other industry are reversed in Hollywood. THAT is why revenue sharing needs to be implemented in DVD rental systems and is the sustainable model.
Clearly you don’t understand economics. The basis for conducting business in a free market is RISK. The home builders, auto manufacturers and everyone else take RISK when they produce anything. Sometimes they have to sell their products for LESS than they cost to produce! The Studios are no different. Producing a film includes its fair share of risk. The studios should bare the same responsibility for their investments that everyone else in the business world does. They don’t even bare the same risks currently as there are many controls in place in the form of tax credits that try to mitigate their risk.
Movie budgets (like tuition) are over inflated because the studios (like post secondary institutions) smartly take advantage of government provided safety nets; though, their taking advantage of said nets is not necessarily good for us as Americans/Canadians.
Studio’s do not deserve the help they currently receive. Redbox is an honest company that has adapted to the current home media climate and deserves to profit from their own risk-taking. If I were running Redbox I’d tell the studios to go get f***ed.
Incidentally I’ve never used a Redbox machine in my life. I purchase films I like to support the retailers who sell them.
Disney wins either way, Redbox pays more and gets the disks earlier, or they wait and get them cheaper. Disney is still selling X amount of disks. Consumers that are going to buy are going to buy consumers that are going to rent are going to rent, and people that are going to steal on bit torrent are going to do that, noting is going to change.
Not really, the wholesale price that studios offer to Redbox/Netflix/Blockbuster is probably close to or the same as the wholesale price Walmart gets. Disney and Warner Bros. aren’t making any more money from Redbox buying at retail. The only people benefiting here are the retailers and us consumers.
Seems to me that Redbox is better off buying one or two titles that are hot from other sources, than waiting out the delay window. This way they don’t have to also buy the lesser titles. I don’t think that this will hurt them one bit. Of course $1 rentals are not helping the industry at all.
Speaking as a customer not associated with the industry, if I’m not interested enough to get my ass to a theater when a film is first released (and I seldom am) then I won’t have any problem with waiting a while longer for it to be available from Netflix, even if that availability is delayed. There are plenty of other films I can enjoy in the meantime. Who, exactly, do the studio’s think they are influencing by making people wait to see a movie via Redbox and Netflix? I’ve only bought DVD’s if I’ve already seen the film and want to add it to my collection – but perhaps there are many people who will go out and buy a film even wihtout having seen it first?
Exactly. I am not going to see ONE movie in the theater this year. But, I’m going to watch a handful of them on DVD when Netflix gets them.
Yep. What’s one month more after being willing to wait six months.
I have 300+ titles in my Netflix queue now and that number has been more or less constant for years. If I’m seeing stuff from two years ago, who cares? I’ll get around to it eventually and it’ll take me two years to get around to whatever crap is in the theaters now.
Who cares about release windows? It’s not like movies spoil like tomatoes.
Apparently everyone else is also buying themselves some ‘John Carter’ discs, too. Except for a bunch of inept critics and a few actual movie-goers with no taste, the film is very well-received and well-liked. That so-called “flop” is going to make a lot of money for Disney… gee, what are they going to do when that “write-down” turns out to be a money-maker? hmmm…
Haha, it will NOT be a money-maker.
“Haha, it will NOT be a money-maker”
Says another troll who isnt aware it has already made its money back over seas.
Ummm.. no, it most certainly has not. Have you been living under a rock? Who’s the troll here?
Yes, it most definitely has. Again, check the latest box office and sales charts.
OK, I just checked the latest charts (remember, $250 million budget):
worldwide gross: just under $300 million (1) it’s still rolling at the top of the box office in China, and (2) it’s about to open in Japan. (So, what to expect in another month? …$500 million gross? …maybe — maybe less — maybe more?)
Now, there’s also the DVD/Blu-ray sales which just started… well, I’ll let you check, say, Amazon (but, FYI, reviews/ratings by hundreds of actual purchasers of the film give it 4.5 out of 5 stars — they/we *love* the movie [enough to buy it]).
Disney said they lost around 250 million on the film, so its NOT a moneymaker for them.
And Disney lied. Actually, it was just a write-down for the last quarter. The box office gross for the film so far worldwide has exceeded the $250 million budget. That’s only going to increase. The movie is also #1 on Amazon’s movie chart, so people are buying the discs in a major way. Not make money? You’re deluded and uninformed. Before the end of this year, the movie will probably be $250 million in the black–the majority of that being profit for Disney.
I hate t be the one to bite at this.
Lou, you do not seem to understand that Disney is not the only one with a finger in the box-office pie. The number you see on B.O. charts is divided amongst the theaters, taxes, and performers. Disney will only receive around half of the domestic B.O. and less of the International B.O. That puts Disney around $120 mil take home. Then you have to consider the costs. The production budget was reported at $250 mil, but then there is the Prints and Advertising budget which was likely between $70 mil and $100 mil for a major release like John Carter.
That gives us a loss of $200+ mil. Bluray sales are not going to fill that void.
Maybe you should figure out how it works befor you shoot your mouth off. hmm?
If thats the case, why did DIsney admit they LOST $200 million on the film? I know you want to beleive that John Carter was a hit, and was a good movie, but neither is true. Your living in a fatasy world.
You really need to keep up with the latest box office and sales charts. However, I guess it’s easier to maintain your own fantasy world if you don’t keep in touch with reality.
Lou, between marketing costs, the budget and the significant cut the theaters get from the movie, which, by the way is bigger overseas than it is here, John Carter would need to be the biggest DVD since Avatar to even come close to breaking even.
It has nothing to do with the quality of the film.
Now stop being rude to people.
A movie needs to make way more in revenue then the movie cost to make a profit. Theater owners get up to fifty percent of the money they take in on a movie. In addition you have marketing costs,etc. Its generally accepted that a movie needs to make at least 60 to 70 percent more then it costs before its profitable. John Carter will definitly not make money for Disney. The marketing costs alone are more then 50 million.
This is greed without any common sense. If I saw a movie in the theater and loved it (with plans to watch again in the future) I will buy it. I’m not going to pay $20-$30 for a blue-ray of a movie I have not seen. I WILL pay a dollar to rent it from Redbox and if I like it enough, then I will buy it. This happens fairly often in fact. So in my case, RedBox helps the studios make sales. Of course, that means they have to make quality movies, which is the real issue.
Sadly, there is not only a 28 day window AFTER DVDs are released, that they’re available at a discount from studios to Netflix/Redbox.
For some immoral people, there is a rule of thumb 28 day window BEFORE the DVD is released to the public, that a DVD ripped copy of a movie appears on Bit Torrent.
So it behooves studios to come up with an appropriate balance so they can make the most money in this technically savvy world , and I don’t think a 56 day window does that. Frankly 28 days is too long.
This is asinine. Do the studios really think that Redbox customers are just a small time incentive away from choosing to purchase a $20/$30 DVD/Blu-ray over the $1 rental? It’s ridiculous. No one is opting to buy these things instead of waiting a little longer to rent. All they are doing here is encouraging people to steal their product online.
They need to work with Redbox and others to raise the price of the rentals. Period. $1 a night is unsustainable. They could also try lowering the purchase price of DVDs/Blu-rays to genuinely incentivize purchasing over renting.
You can look at it two ways.
1.) There’s an interesting franchise plan afoot. There’s no reason why “John Carter” can’t show up on TV and in animation and back to the movies again. Isn’t that why Hollywood has re-boot fever? Just try to kill these I.P. Goliaths at any of the studios. Investing in a new superhero for the long run…may be very, very smart. Audiences didn’t reject the film per se. It was too expensive for a character that isn’t omnipresent on a certain level as with the Marvel and D.C. characters. Are the Burroughs copyrights about to expire soon? I don’t know this – have they already expired? May factor into things. (If “Magic Mike” is a hit again…hello Tarzan…come to mama! Is he tied up at Warner Bros. because of “Greystoke?” And will Jane and Cheetah get over there in time to untie him?!)
2.) Cover-up of the tax write-off. You can not spend that much on a movie for an unknown character without any brand awareness for the character and the property and not have a toy licensing deal at one of the fast food restaurants at the very least. DreamWorks and “Madagascar 3″ are certainly aware of this.
Perhaps a synthesis of both 1. and 2. They may proceed with “John Carter” because of a variety of reasons. Something tells me this is just the beginning.
The movie was not bad and not boring but also not memorable.
Disney logic – people wouldn’t pay $12 to see this bomb in theaters, but we think we can get them to spend $20 to watch it at home.
Actually, that’s what I’m doing. Watched it on Bittorrent and immediately ordered the Blu-Ray.
But that’s not Disney logic, which has been to disown its own product for a tax advantage. Walt would have kept his nerve.
Since Redbox does not rent 3d, I would rather VOD from Vudu or my cable provider
Get caught and pay more to save a buck
NO THANK YOU!!!
It seems to me that they are price fixing. Is that not illegal. What happened to free enterprise. We should be able to buy and sell or rent for what be want to. It a shame