Chapter 11, In Which Blockbuster Does the Inevitable
Repudiating claims last year that Blockbuster intended to file for bankruptcy, spokesperson Karen Raskopf said the troubled video-rental chain had “lots of plans to grow our business.”
That may well have been the case, but they don’t seem to have done much good, because Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy today, beaten into submission by nearly $1 billion in debt, growing competition from Netflix, Amazon and Apple, and consumers’ developing affinity for streaming and on-demand video services.
Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes said the move will allow Blockbuster to “continue to transform our business model to meet the evolving preferences of our customers.”
Which presumably means further retail store closures as the company reduces its nearly $1 billion debt to about $100 million.
Hardly a surprise–particularly since the company alerted the six major movie studios of its plans to enter a “pre-planned” bankruptcy in mid-September.
Incidentally, the companies that have been instrumental in landing Blockbuster in the dire straits in which it finds itself are all doing quite well on the stock market today. At $162.13, Netflix (NFLX) is up 3.31 percent; at $155.20 Amazon (AMZN) is up 2.19 percent; and at $291.80 Apple (AAPL) is up 1.39 percent.