Rental stores snap up Scoundrels
Title available at several non-Blockbuster stores despite Weinstein deal
By Susanne Ault -- Video Business, 2/15/2007
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FEB. 15 | Despite a crackdown on distribution, The Weinstein Co.’s School for Scoundrels was available for rent at a number of non-Blockbuster outlets, including Netflix, on its Feb. 13 street date.
Through a Netflix membership, VB was received a copy of Scoundrels on street date. Most 1,800 rentailing members of the Video Buyers Group and six-store DVDNow! in Redmond, Wash., also were among the non-Blockbuster storefronts renting Scoundrels to customers on that day.
“I’m in the parking lot of Wal-Mart with over 100 copies,” DVDNow! owner Tom Paine said on Tuesday afternoon. “It’s real time-consuming, and I’d much rather go through distribution, but that’s the way it goes. Sometimes you have to be creative.”
Last fall, TWC named Blockbuster the “exclusive” rental outlet for its titles, in exchange for heavy copy depth and healthy promotion at the chain.
After Jan. 16 releases The Protector and Seven Swords leaked out to many rentailers other than Blockbuster, TWC and its disc distributor, Genius Products, required that wholesale distributor partners offer Weinstein titles only to sell-through clients.
Neither TWC, Genius nor Blockbuster had any comment about Scoundrels other than to repeat that the Blockbuster deal has been effective.
Many rentailers, however, are buying Weinstein titles elsewhere and renting them to their own customers. The Weinstein titles are being sold into the sell-through channel without restriction.
Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey declined to specify how the company worked Scoundrels through its pipeline so quickly.
“We’re legally obtaining copies of [Weinstein] DVDs and providing them to members, so you can continue to have the best experience with Netflix,” Swasey said.
Some rentailers see a silver lining in the Weinstein deal, as Blockbuster has strongly hyped Scoundrels with posters on its windows.
“They all say exclusively available at Blockbuster,” said one rentailing source. “That brings a higher awareness of the movie” among all consumers.
Sell-through copies of Weinstein DVDs released at least halfway through March are expected to carry a consumer warning that the discs are ‘for sale only,’ as The Protector did in January. But rentailers say that so far none of their customers have expressed concern about renting them outside of Blockbuster.
“I blew an e-mail to about 500 [VBG] members and asked them about it,” said Ted Engen, VBG president. “Of all the e-mails I got back, no one said that a customer noticed anything.”
