I put Miss Potter on my Netflix queue some months back, and noted that it was listed with a “Very Long Wait.” I expect to see that when a movie first comes out on DVD, but this never changed—except for a brief period when it mysteriously dropped off my queue altogether and moved into the little box where unavailable or pre-release movies appear. Earlier this month, when I was going to be out of town for a week, I moved it to the top of my queue, but Netflix just kept skipping it and sending me whatever was #2. Finally, this weekend, I decided to give in and rent the movie from Blockbuster. That’s how I learned about the “Blockbuster Exclusives.”
A little Googling tells me that it’s one specific company, Weinstein, that is selling rental copies only to Blockbuster.
So what’s the deal? Is this permanent–these films will never be on Netflix? All those people who reviewed the affected films on Netflix didn’t actually get 'em there? And howcum when, just as a test, I tried adding another movie that I noticed at Blockbuster with the “Exclusive” blurb to my Netflix queue (Murderous Intent), it said it was available now?
What Blockbuster has is an exclusive license agreement with Weinstein, that they’re not extending to other rental stores. That doesn’t mean that Netflix doesn’t have any copies. It just means that Netflix doesn’t get whatever special (probably low-price profit-sharing) deal Blockbuster has.
There is nothing to prevent Netflix from marching into Walmart and buying 100,000 copies, if they want, and then renting them. Of course, it’s more expensive to do so, but Netflix will do something if they have to, to get the movies to rent. The fact that one of them often shows as long wait probably just means that they have few copies, or that some were lost/not returned. The fact that the other movie is available proves that the “exclusive” deal doesn’t keep Netflix from getting the DVDs. The only way that Netflix could actually be prevented is if there were no copies of the DVD sold to anyone but Blockbuster. I doubt that Weinstein is that stupid.
And, just to head this off at the pass, since someone always tries to spread misinformation in these kinds of threads: No, there isn’t any special “rental license” that Netflix can’t get. There has never been a special license for rental movies. The only reason that tapes used to cost more at first is that they charged more during the first six months or so (because they were targeting the rental market). DVDs never had rental pricing like this.
Well, I’m just glad to know it isn’t totally unavailable from Netflix. It still pisses me off, though, and leaves me inclined to boycott Weinstein’s product. Factory Girl–same deal with the Very Long Wait–is on my queue; I’ll probably take it off.
So those Blockbuster TV ads that tout a recent release as being “exclusively at Blockbuster” don’t mean a thing? A large corporation misleading me to make a profit? Well I never…
It looks like Netflix is doing exactly what I suggested: going out and purchasing copies of the movies to rent out. These copies have a warning message on them that claims the copies are for sale only, not rental. Some video rental organizations are challenging the warning in court, and it appears that Weinstein is trying to pull shenanigans with their suppliers to not sell the movies to any store that they think will rent them.
Yes, we have to buy all our Weinstein videos retail. I’ve been planning to start a Pit thread on it. After all, isn’t Weinstein pretty much the house that Pulp Fiction built? The first beneficiary of the Indie boom? And they’re shutting out indie stores? I wrote Michael Moore about it. He hasn’t responded.
That was the Weinsteins’ first company, Miramax Pictures (named for their parents, Miriam and Max), which by the time Pulp Fiction came out was (and still is) a fully-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. In 2005, the Weinsteins left Miramax to found their own independent, self-named movie studio, The Weinstein Company.
Apparently, there’s something in US copyright law called the “First Sale Doctrine” that allows anyone to do with a copyrighted work without infringing upon the copyright holder’s rights after purchasing a copy. This is what allows Netflix and others to buy a Weinstein movie and rent it despite the “for sale only” warning. (Many early VHSs, including the very first movies on VHS put out by the very first home video company, Magnetic Video, were also intended for sale only, and when Disney first started making VHS, they sold both “for sale only” and “for rental only” copies to stores and rental outlets, respectively.)
