October 8, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

Hastings chief John Marmaduke makes one of the most clear and well-reasoned arguments against Redbox and $1 per night DVD rentals that I've seen, in a blog post on The Wrap. Marmaduke writes in response to the forum The Wrap gave Redbox's Mitch Lowe earlier in the week.

The crux of the matter, from Marmaduke:  "... if new releases would be available for $1 rental, consumers would be encouraged to forgo watching a movie in the theaters and instead wait a few months. Consumers would be discouraged from renting from bricks-and-mortar video stores -- putting these stores out of business and reducing access to the thousands of movies that can't fit into a kiosk. Consumers wou...Read More

October 7, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

 Barron's Tech Trader Daily blog reports that Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson today launched coverage of Coinstar (CSTR) with an Overweight rating and $38 price target. The parent of the Redbox video kiosk chain trades around $32. Olson sees several trends working in Redbox's favor, including kiosks taking share from bricks-and-mortar rental stores, Internet delivery still being several years from the mainstream, and consumers shifting $pending from packaged media purchases to $1 rentals. 

It's for all these reasons that we have to believe that major studio holdouts Fox, Warner and Universal will&nbs...Read More

October 6, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

Fox will bring critically-acclaimed rom-com (500) Days of Summer, starring indie queen Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, out on DVD and Blu-ray Dec. 22 (prebook Nov. 25), just in time for last-minute gift-giving. The quirky, sweet comedy made $37 million in a barely-wide (1,000 screens at its peak) summer theatrical release.

The BD ($39.99) will be loaded with extra features, including digital copy, commentary, deleted and extended scenes with optional commentary, audition tapes, storyboards, music videos and more.

Check it out:

• Feature commentary with Director Marc Webb, Writer Michael Weber, Co-Writer Scott Neustadter and Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt
• Lost Days of Summer: Deleted and Extended Scen

...Read More

October 2, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Netflix chief Reed Hastings, already a member of the Video Business Video Hall of Fame and of Time magazine's "Time 100" list of the one hundred most influential global citizens, this week was named one of The Huffington Post's "Game Changers."

HuffPost has identified 100 "innovators, visionaries, and leaders in 10 categories who are harnessing the power of new media to reshape their fields and change the world." Hastings is in the Entertainment category, along with Jimmy Fallon, Ashton Kutcher, Nikki Finke (Deadline Hollywood Daily), Adam McKay and Will Ferrell (Funnyordie.com), actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt...Read More
Industries: Retail

September 29, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

 "Simply said, the studios have destroyed the price-value relationship in video, particularly when low priced rental alternatives have sprung up everywhere."

That's a quote from iIndustry veteran Bill Mechanic's  wide ranging keynote speech at Independent Film & Television Alliance Production Conference in Santa Monica today. In it, the exec delivered a frank assessment of everything from creativity (or lack of it) at major studios, the copycat strategies of many independent producers, the glut of films produced over the past several years, and the role the studios themselves have played in "the confused video market."

Of course, Mechanic knows that of which he speaks. He currently is president/CEO of independent production company Pandemonium LLC a...Read More