Film Companies Stick It To Redbox

image from watchitguide.net

According to Slashfilm.com film industry mega-giants, Fox and Universal are really putting the screws to Redbox these days. As anyone who follows this blog knows, we're huge fans of Netflix and Redbox, so anyone who tampers with our beloved rental systems get us riled up. We recently reported the news that these production conglomerates were putting a 28-day waiting period on all new releases for Netflix. These same companies seem to be using underhanded dirty politicking to turn mega-retailers like Walmart and Target against Redbox. The two stares are going to institute a five new release maximum-purchase rule to ensure that Redbox's supplies stay limited. Walmart will institute the rule for any new release for a very inconspicuous amount of time - 28 days, whereas Target, the lighter hearted of the two will only "enforce" (and I use that term lightly) the rule a week after a DVD is released. Walmart issued the following blanket statement to cover themselves:

"From time to time, we have placed purchase limits on products at stores so that they can be accessible and available to as many customers as possible."

I understand purchase-limits on things like... tomatoes. Stock of food is important to limit at certain points in time because that's a non-infinite resource. It takes time to grow produce. These are DVDs! Not exactly a product that we ship to third world countries because they're in low supply of them. In all of the support for Haiti, I'm pretty sure the money donated isn't going toward food, water, shelter, and a hundred thousand copies of Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. Sorry Americans! You can't rent or buy six copies of this new release this month because we had to send a good majority of the produced supply to Haiti. Don't try to be coy about it, Walmart, just admit your in bed with the grand-daddies of Hollywood film production.

And the article I linked to also makes a good point. How the heck are Walmart and Target going to enforce this to stop Redbox employees from buying these DVDs for their service's purposes? Sure, you've deterred them by ensuring a single employee doesn't buy in bulk, but surely you could have a company picnic outside the store and send each employee in one at a time to buy five copies. All in all, I say to you Walmart/Target/Fox/Universal: Fail.