Redbox Parent Company Files for Bankruptcy

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment hasn't paid employees in more than a week
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 1, 2024 12:30 AM CDT
Redbox Parent Company Files Chapter 11
FILE - In this Aug. 7, 2009 file photo, a rental DVD is dispensed from a Redbox, a DVD movie rental kiosk, in Los Angeles.   (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, file)

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, which owns movie rental company Redbox, is not in good shape. The Redbox parent company is nearly a billion dollars in debt, and owes money to "almost everyone in Hollywood," as the Verge puts it—not to mention its own employees, who apparently haven't been paid in more than a week. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Friday, the New York Times reports. Its debts, which total $970 million, are to big entertainment and media companies (including Universal Studios, Sony Pictures, Lionsgate, Warner Bros., Paramount, and BBC Studios Americas), smaller studios and streaming companies, smart TV manufacturers, its landlords, and the company from whom it rents its fleet of cars, plus a few retailers (Walgreens, Walmart).

  • Redbox, founded in 2002, is known for its red movie rental kiosks, commonly seen inside and outside grocery stores and pharmacies. It was acquired by Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment in 2022, when Redbox already had $325 million in debt. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment had previously acquired a majority stake in streaming service Crackle from Sony in 2019, Variety reports.
  • Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment is separate from the book-publishing division of the Chicken Soup for the Soul company, which publishes inspirational books and was founded in 1993 by motivational speakers Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. The book-publishing arm will not be affected by the Chapter 11 filing. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, founded in 2016, has requested relief funds to pay its 1,000 full- and part-time employees. It has also vowed to reinstate employee health insurance coverage, which lapsed in May.
  • At one point, Deadline notes, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment "had built itself into one of the top players in free, ad-supported streaming, with Crackle, Popcornflix, and an eponymous Chicken Soup outlet designed for more wholesome, female-skewing programming." But that momentum has since dwindled.
  • Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, which listed assets of around $414 million in its bankruptcy filing, has been sued more than a dozen times for unpaid debts since acquiring Redbox. Its car fleet vehicles were recently ordered to be repossessed.
  • It was not yet clear whether the bankruptcy filing would affect operations at Redbox, which has about 27,000 kiosks in the US currently.
(More Redbox stories.)

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