Redbox Is Officially Out of Business With Parent Company Chicken Soup’s Bankruptcy Devolving Into Liquidation

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The 20-year-old DVD kiosk rental biz, which peaked in 2012 with 43,500 locations nationwide, will be broken up and sold at auction

Redbox
(Image credit: Redbox)

The 20-year-old DVD rental kiosk business Redbox will shutter, with a Delaware bankruptcy court judge approving parent company Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment's request to shift its proceedings from Chapter 11 restructuring to Chapter 7 liquidation. 

Also read: End of the Line for Chicken Soup — Redbox Owner Files for Bankruptcy

Redbox’s 24,000 remaining kiosks will be closed and sold at auction, and the 1,033 remaining Redbox employees will lose their jobs. 

The move marks an inglorious in for two venerable niche media brands, after Chicken Soup made an ill-fated decision two years ago to take on $325 million in debt by acquiring Redbox. 

At the time, Redbox — which had recently conducted a SPAC IPO — was struggling in its attempt to convert a user base of streaming late adopters into regular AVOD users. 

Chicken Soup fared no better in this quest. And now, Redbox — a business first incubated in Chicago in 2004 by former McDonald’s executive Gregg Kaplan, and which peaked in 2012 with 43,500 kiosk locations nationwide — is no more. 

Chicken Soup for the Soul, meanwhile, started in the late 1990s as a line of self-help books out of Cos Cob, Connecticut. 

Daniel Frankel
Daniel Frankel

Daniel Frankel is the managing editor of Next TV, an internet publishing vertical focused on the business of video streaming. A Los Angeles-based writer and editor who has covered the media and technology industries for more than two decades, Daniel has worked on staff for publications including E! Online, Electronic Media, Mediaweek, Variety, paidContent and GigaOm. You can start living a healthier life with greater wealth and prosperity by following Daniel on Twitter today!