Why is it so difficult to rent a movie these days?

Renting a movie was a special experience. It was like a journey. It somehow made the whole endeavor more meaningful. It's tempting to remember it as something quaint and backwards. But the truth is that the consumer experience of renting movies hasn't evolved so much as regressed. It used to be that you could almost invariably rent any movie that was playing in the theater within a month or two of leaving the multiplex. Today, that's no longer the case. In fact, most newer movies can't be rented at all. Instead, they're only available for purchase.

In the heyday of video collecting, owning movies made sense. You could stack them on your shelf. Your video collection said something about you. Whenever I went to a house party during my college years in the early 2000s, the first thing I did was browse the host's video and DVD collection. I would enviously browse through someone's complete collection of the 007 franchise, or perhaps snobbishly change my mind about the host when I discovered his predictable fondness for every single Star Wars film.

Those days are over now that film has gone digital. “There's this whole 'digital dark ages' thing,” says Brian Lloyd, film editor at Entertainment.ie. “We all take (digital) pictures and watch stuff on Netflix, but in 10 or 20 years, that could all just disappear.”

An industry insider, who wished to remain anonymous, explained how a film's journey from theatrical release to home cinema actually works these days. “In cinema, the priority is to promote the cultural perception of a film,” he said.

Once a film leaves the theater, it can go to PVOD (premium video on demand), then to VOD (a video on demand service like Netflix) and eventually end up on terrestrial television, he explained. “That's the life cycle of a film.”

But where does the distribution model fit into this lifecycle? I did some research to see if the films I've classified as un-distributable are an anomaly or if there's a broader shift away from distribution. I conducted a survey of the top 10 biggest box office hits of 2023 and the results are revealing.

Although the 10 films examined were released last year, Irish customers can only rent four of them. The rest must be purchased. The most popular film of 2023, Barbie, is not available to rent in Ireland. Oppenheimer, so popular in Ireland because of Cillian Murphy's Oscar triumph, is also not available to rent here. The only option is to buy it on YouTube for €10.99 or on the Sky Store for a whopping €15.99.

Some of the top 10 films can be found on streaming platforms. The Little Mermaid is available to Disney+ subscribers and the latest film Mission Impossible can be watched on Paramount Plus. But again, a prior paid subscription is required. Not everyone wants to sign up to a streaming platform.

So we have to shell out cash for the privilege of “owning” the computer file of the films in question, but do you actually own it? As Geoffrey Morrison writes in the New York Times: “What you are buying in most cases is a license to watch that video.”

So if the platform you bought the movie from goes out of business, so does your MP4 file. You never truly own a digital movie.

The big question is: Why are some movies available to rent and others not? Uneven distribution models create an unpredictable and frustrating experience for consumers. It's disappointing to sit down and watch a new movie only to find there's no option to rent.

Lloyd argues that the entire rental model as a release strategy has virtually disappeared.

“How did it work in the past? You went to Xtra-vision, there were loads of rental copies, you borrowed them and brought them back. That's how it was,” he remembers.

“We no longer have any brick-and-mortar stores. The rental market as we remember it no longer exists. It will never return.”

But it hasn't disappeared completely. Forty percent of the films in my survey are available to rent digitally in Ireland. So why is there now such a patchy rental landscape?

“They have very complex licensing agreements,” Lloyd explains. “So you see that certain films are available to rent, but others are not. And then you see certain films
appear on Netflix or Prime Video for 30, 60 or 90 days and then they're gone. It all depends on the licensing agreements and trying to understand them is like trying to untangle a tangle of cables.”

There also seems to be a belief that promoting a “buy only” option will generate more revenue for studios, since purchase fees are significantly higher than rental fees. But forcing consumers to buy a fleeting 90-minute experience can anger them.

What advice would Lloyd give to a young geezer like me, still clinging to a model of home entertainment consumption that seems to have become outdated over the last decade?

“Grow up and move on,” Lloyd laughs to himself.

No thanks, I'll stick with my complete James Bond DVD collection for now.