www.marketwatch.com/story/is-blockbuster...coming-back-7f7f9563
rental chain Blockbuster are keeping an eye out for some kind of remake after the company’s website returned from the dead in recent days.
A visit to Blockbuster.com now directs to a message reading, “We are working on rewinding your movie.” And on a mobile site: “Be kind while we rewind.”
The chain, crowded out first by mail movie rentals and then streaming, such as on Netflix NFLX, 2.05%, Disney DIS, -2.45% and Apple AAPL, -0.25%, went bust some 10 years ago. Some notable franchised Blockbuster stores, essentially community fixtures, remained open for a few years longer, including two on the Alaska frontier. One store, believed to be the U.S.’s very last, remains in Oregon.
At a price tag of $320 million, cable operator Dish Network Corp. bought Blockbuster and its brand out of bankruptcy in 2011 and closed all company-owned stores by 2013. Dish hasn’t done much with it since.
Still, no spoilers in this drama yet from the ownership. Dish Network DISH, -2.77% didn’t immediately return MarketWatch’s request for confirmation that the revised website indicated rebirth of the Blockbuster brand.
Fondness for Blockbuster and the days of VHS tapes and their offspring, DVDs and Blu-rays, has increased in step with middle-age nostalgia and a Gen Z obsession for many things ’80s and ’90s.
In fact, last year, proving that irony isn’t dead, streaming giant Netflix released a now-canceled sitcom based on employees of Blockbuster’s last store.
The company’s single remaining real-life store, still operating as a Bend, Ore., franchise, has become a popular attraction, serving as a museum as much as a rental spot. It was even briefly an Airbnb listing.
An “official” Blockbuster Twitter account pokes fun at itself, even injecting its brand into news of the day from time to time. The account has given no indication of a revived business model.
Still, social media caught whiff of Blockbuster’s new message.
Some wondered if this was Dish and Blockbuster’s way of hinting they too will join an expanded market of streamers.
If so, most die-hards say it was the store experience, including staff picks and strict rewind policies, that shaped the Blockbuster that most recall.
Like in Alaska’s last two Blockbuster stores — community gathering spots and nostalgic tourist attractions that got a big plug from HBO’s John Oliver. They outlasted the others, but shuttered in 2018.
The franchises in Anchorage and Fairbanks were also once featured on the news magazine program CBS Sunday Morning in 2017. The program aired a feature on the significance of destination entertainment that these Blockbusters offered in Alaska, where movie nights and other social events supplemented rentals.
Their existence, long after the dinosaur retail chain was extinct in much of the U.S., was prolonged by relatively strong customer demand. That’s because the fast internet service needed for streaming entertainment comes at a hefty premium in Alaska compared with the lower 48.
