Great Job, Internet!: Little Free Blockbusters are bringing back video stores one block at a time

Blockbuster nostalgia is alive and well, and so is the urge to rent movies. Along with a renaissance in local, independent video stores in cities and towns across the U.S., little Free Blockbusters have also been appearing on neighborhood streets, offering free rentals in a variety of formats to anyone who wants one. They operate much like Little Free Libraries, except for DVDs, Blu-rays, and video cassettes, and some blue and gold branding that evokes a certain video chain. For the last seven years, the project has been growing around the world, offering people “the thrill of discovery,” FreeBlockbuster.org President and Secretary Brian Morrison tells The A.V. Club by phone. Free Blockbusters are not a “curated collection […] It is randomness. It is chaos.” 

Morrison founded his first franchise in 2019 to solve a problem. Noticing the hollowed-out husks of L.A. Weekly newspaper dispensers left in the wake of the publisher’s decision to cease filling them, he wondered, “How do we take this corporate blight and turn it into something useful instead of just putting it in the trash?” Simple: He painted it blue and stuffed it with movies. What started as a waste-free initiative to do something with all these empty newspaper boxes and unwanted VHS cassettes, DVDs, and Blu-rays left behind in the streaming revolution now has just under 400 outposts throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and the U.K. Free Blockbuster is now an international art project that goes well beyond nostalgia.