Breaking News: Blockbuster Acquires Movielink

Blockbuster issued a press release to announce the acquisition of Movielink, Deal Includes Content Agreements With Major Studios
Gives Blockbuster Access to One of the Largest Libraries of Downloadable Movies.

With thousands of movies and television shows available in its digital library for downloading, Movielink offers customers the ability to legally download entertainment content for rental (VOD) and for purchase (EST). The service was created in 2002 by Movielink, LLC, a joint venture of Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Studios.

The acquisition of Movielink, which has VOD and EST license agreements with the five founding studios, as well as more than 30 other studios, television-content distributors, and foreign and independent content providers, enables Blockbuster to offer consumers downloadable entertainment content via their PCs, portable devices, television-connected home networks and approved set-top boxes.

This deal was expected (see the March 1st WSJ story), and it'll be interesting to see how Blockbuster prices the movies for Total Access members. If they continue to charge for the movies, it will give Netflix the advantage in price, but if they give them away it will add an additional expense to the costly Total Access program.

As reported earlier, Blockbuster and Movielink both use Choicestream recommendation technology, so that part of integration could be simple. Sorry Mac users (I'm one), but Movielink requires Windows.

Comments

Good move on BBI's part. I think this puts them on solid competitive footing with Netflix. It'll be interesting to see how they plan to integrate it into their online subscription model.

[bobemmerich]

While waiting to see what happens, I think the interesting part of the following comments (from CNN):

Chief Executive Jim Keyes, who recently succeeded John Antioco, told Reuters that Blockbuster will operate Movielink independently and eventually make elements of the service, with more than 3,300 titles available to download, available through blockbuster.com.

are "independently" and "eventually".

[KrispyKritter]

That would be nice another bonus feature from BB but before they do anything they should concentrate on improving the speed of their queue it is so SLOW!!!!!!!!!

[Edward R Murrow]

It's important to recognize the difference between these two services:
1) Watch Now is a streaming service
2) Movie Link is a download

WSJ is saying BBI picked Movielink up for less than $20 million!

"Movie-rental chain Blockbuster Inc. secured a foothold in the small but potentially significant online movie downloading business by acquiring Movielink LLC, a downloading service owned by the major Hollywood studios.

After several months of talks, first reported in March, Blockbuster said late yesterday it had acquired Movielink from the studios for undisclosed terms. The Wall Street Journal had reported in March that the price was said to be less than $50 million, although the final deal was less than $20 million, said a person familiar with the situation."

[d3vkit]

I think a good move now would be to make each returned rental add a movie download to your queue, or possibly give you "points" or something towards a download.

[Edward R Murrow]

d3vkit, drilling down on your idea: what about if customers use TA to get a New Release and if they return it within the two days, then they would earn bonus points towards a download off of MovieLink.