A just-announced joint venture between Verizon and Redbox will soon offer a service combining video streaming and physical DVD rentals. Now wait just a sec. Isn’t there some company that already does both of those things?
The new Batman sequel, The Dark Knight Rises, is easily one of the year’s most heavily anticipated movies. There aren’t that many films, after all, that could sell out shows six months before the movie debuts.
It’s fairly standard practice today for movies to become available for sale on one day, and only become available for rent after several more weeks have passed. For four or so weeks, the only way fans can see the movie is to buy it. For obvious reasons, this 28-day test in delayed gratification succeeds in [...]
Last year was a bad one for the movie business, with the fewest tickets sold since 1995 and revenues that dropped 4.5% from the previous year. Analysts foresee a better year ahead in 2012, and what is it that’s expected to turn things around? Yep, higher ticket prices.
Reviews aside, it’s been a bad year at the movies. By the time 2011 comes to an end, ticket revenues are expected to be down 4.5% compared to 2010. This is despite today’s higher ticket prices: The average movie admission crossed the $8 mark for the first time ever in 2011.
Starting on Monday, October 31, Redbox is raising its DVD rental prices from $1 to $1.20 per day. While a 20% increase is significant, we’re only talking about a price hike of a mere two dimes daily. Still, wouldn’t you rather keep that 20¢?
Blockbuster has had a miserable couple of years, closing thousands of movie rental stores, entering bankruptcy, and generally serving as one of the recession era’s biggest business flop stories. Now, though, as Netflix and Redbox—the movie-rental competitors that helped put Blockbuster on the ropes—are raising prices, Blockbuster sees an opening to get back in the [...]
The DVD rental kiosk service Redbox has been enormously successful at a time when much of the economy has struggled. The value and simplicity of Redbox’s product are prime reasons why business has been so good: a flat $1 for each day a DVD is rented. Customers had to know that one day, prices just [...]
The bizarrely dedicated fans of the McDonald’s McRib sandwich are overjoyed that the barbecue-sauce-soaked boneless pork patty treat is returning for a limited time to all U.S. Golden Arches locations. But are McRib devotees simply being McManipulated?
Increasingly, consumers just aren’t buying movies. Frustrated with the sales slowdown, movie studios are eager to find new ways of getting more money out of consumers.
Netflix’s recent troubles, which began with a a new pricing plan that raised rates by 60% on many subscribers and continued as members fled, the stock price tanked, and the company decided to split its business in two, has given new life to a competitor considered on its last breath, Blockbuster. The once ubiquitous movie-rental [...]
