Warner Bros. coming back to rentrak

[CHICAGOTOM]

Steve, we also bring in a lot of direct to video titles but as a general rule we ONLY bring them in when we can get it through Rentrak ...IMO the risk on "B" product is too high to buy it outright ...of course if there is a title with good star power we bring it in but I have to be very confident that a title will rent well before I'll bring it in from traditional distribution .

I also don't like the idea that I cannot sell some titles and I think Warners is making a mistake but rental is the main part of my business and IMO revsharing allows me to have the hot titles in stock more often during the first two crucial weekends

When a customer asks WHY he can't buy a Warner title I will just blame it on
the contract we have with the studio 

[moviecritic202]

not to butt in, but that is exactly my take on the Warner contract.  If I would have decided no it would have been because of the sell-thru thing, but seeing as sell-thru has really slowed down for me, getting stuff like Otis and the upcoming Lost Boys sequal (it will rent well) kinda offsets it.

The only titles that may be in huge demand for sell-thru for me are The Bucket List, 10,000 B.C., and the Dark Knight when it comes out.  Unfortunatly if I want to meet that demand I would have to get like 40 of them and there is no way I would be able to rent that many enough times (I would not even have room on my shelf for them).


Nick

[Mindvise]

First off I want to thank Tom for his time today.  We spent a half hour talking on the phone about the pro's and con's of this deal.  After talking with him and my Rentrak rep, I've decided to sign up for it.

My deciding factors were twofold....first my sell-thru isn't that great to begin with because of the size of my market....and second, Warner won't be taking late fees...and in my market my a large protion of my customers are habitually late, so it makes for a good revenue stream.