Do Rental Stores get movies before they go for sale?

Question

I just rented Resident Evil Extenction from a Rental machine..

Unless i'm wrong i thought it doesnt come out till tues.

Answer 1

You're right, it doesn't come out until Tuesday. They screwed up. The Wal-Mart here does that all the time. I've bought several movies before the official release date.

Answer 2

Studios determine the "street date" or release date of movies but distribute them several days before they are supposed to "street." Street dates are usually carefully decided on based on many issues including competitive movies also being released, seasonal considerations, how well it did at the box office, etc. However, Wal-Mart is always violating the street dates on releasing movies. But because they buy so much product from the studios, no one says anything. This is typical of the way Wal-Mart does business. The suppliers (in this case, the studios) give up a lot of control of their product when they do business with Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart is the devil and does whatever they want. But once Wal-Mart violates the street date and the studio ignores it, it's a free for all with any competitors as well so street dates don't mean anything any more. That's probably why you were able to get it from a rental machine. I am a manager of a video store and we received word from our district manager today that Wal-Mart was releasing Resident Evil Extinction and that we now had permission to release it too. It becomes a free-for all and the studios lose proprietary control over their product.

Answer 3

Yeah.. generally the rental stores get them in the week before.. (basically one of the perks of working there is being able to watch it before it is released).. they are not supposed to rent them out to customers until the official release date however.. It was most likely a mistake.

Answer 4

I worked for Blockbuster some years ago and then alot of movies were avalible for rental before they were available for sale.Now it seems that they are all avaliable at the same time unless they have distribution rights or they jumped the gun, which could get them in BIG TROUBLE

Answer 5

yea they get them several days before the release date... and they usually go on sale about tuesday... for sale or rent... but i remember one time near christmas one of my old companies competitors released wedding crashers before its release day to increase their sales and decrease ours... so we called are DM and he told us to sell ours too :)

Answer 6

yes, sometimes, depend on the distributor