Published , by Donovan Erskine
Published , by Donovan Erskine
Blockbuster is a relic of a bygone era. With all but one of its North American locations shutting down permanently in 2014, the video rental franchise has been dormant for several years. However, nothing in the entertainment world is truly gone forever, and Blockbuster has begun to reemerge, but not exactly how we remember it. Blockbuster has begun posting on social media again and updating its website, and we’re not exactly sure what’s going on.
Over the past several days, the Blockbuster Twitter account has started to tweet again. These posts include random references to old movies, and jokes about how Netflix put the company out of business. When visiting the Blockbuster website, players are served a pop-up window that calls back to the Nedry error message that was featured in Jurassic Park.
As for what exactly Blockbuster is up to, it could have something to do with NFTs. The company’s first tweet back was a meme about NFTs, and it also interacted with the account for Open Sea, one of the biggest NFT marketplaces. Taking a browse through the Blockbuster search page on Twitter, there’s speculation that Blockbuster could be trading on GameStop’s new NFT marketplace.
If this all sounds oddly familiar to you, that’s because Blockbuster isn’t the first defunct 2000’s retailer to come back from the dead to pedal NFTs or crypto currency. It was just weeks ago that Radio Shack made an unexpected return to social media, grabbing attention with risqué tweets and promoting its new crypto coin.
There’s still a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in the Blockbuster brand, and whoever is in control of it is using that to its advantage. We’ll be watching to what comes out of this revival and will be sure to update this story with new information as it becomes available.