October 19, 1985 was the date of the first ever Blockbuster Video store. This historic day marked the beginning of the era of dominance of the home entertainment market. The home entertainment market actually reshaped Americans thoughts about movies and it lasted almost two decades.
However, the second last Blockbuster store in existence (Alaska one) was closed earlier this year. Now the US only has one store left- The Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon.
Taylor Morden, a documentary filmmaker who produced a movie called “The Last Blockbuster.” In an interview lately, he said,
“It started last year, and there were still a dozen or so Blockbuster locations left. We started filming this thing and I thought, ‘It’s a cool story, there are not many of these stores left, and we’ll maybe start watching as one by one they start closing.’ And that did happen and then it got sprung on us that the one here in Bend, Orgeon, where we live, is going to be the very last one left, and that gave us a sense of urgency and a renewed sense that this was going to be a great story. Yeah, we were already working on it, but the story has changed since then.”
The documentary is set to release in May 2019.
Source- USA Today
There was once a total of 9000 Blockbuster video stores. According to statistics, in 1989, a Blockbuster store opened in US every 17 hours.
But the modern day world is all about live streaming, digital movies, and Netflix. This has outcasted Blockbuster videos and they never had any chance competing.
Source- CBR.com
