Film & home video
Home video was a business of late fees and Friday nights for twenty-five years. Its biggest name is down to one store, and one of the best-funded attempts to replace it lasted six months.
Post-mortems in Film & home video
Blockbuster
1985 – 2010
The biggest name in home video had 9,094 stores in 2004, a billion dollars of new debt and a rival it had declined to buy. One franchised store in Oregon still rents films under the sign.
Quibi
2018 – 2020
Hollywood’s studios and Wall Street put $1.75 billion into ten-minute shows for phones. The service launched into a lockdown, charged for what rivals gave away, and was gone in eight months.
Hollywood Video
1988 – 2010
The No. 2 video rental chain survived its own dot-com disaster, then was sold in 2005 to a rival that paid mostly with borrowed money. Five years later every store was in liquidation.
Redbox
2002 – 2024
A McDonald’s side project that put a dollar-a-night video store in front of 36,000 shops. It outlived Blockbuster by a decade, changed owners four times and was switched off by a bankruptcy judge.