Blockbuster. That word can be about a huge film that shatters box office records like Independence Day. But for every ‘80s and ‘90s kid in America, it conjures up a few familiar images and memories. We vividly remember seeing those bright yellow letters on that infamous logo on a Friday night. We’d hop out the family vehicle and head into the video store, perusing the aisles with ridiculous excitement over our movie choice. Those days are sadly gone with the now-defunct chain (there’s only one privately owned store in Bend, Oregon.) But a new Netflix show is tapping into the Blockbuster nostalgia. The series, aptly titled Blockbuster, seems like it will be a delight based on its first look photo. Blockbuster stars Randall Park and Melissa Fumero as two people working in the last store in the famous franchise.
It will be a one camera workplace comedy in the vein of The Office, digging into those candid daily moments and showing what it takes to make a small business work. That’s about all the plot details for now. And we don’t yet know when the show will drop a trailer or come out. It appears filming is underway so perhaps we will get it before the end of 2022.
But Netflix did bless fans with that aforementioned photo. We see the pair in their Blockbuster uniforms holding up DVD rentals behind the store’s checkout counter. It’s not clear what year this takes place in; however, we can guess it is in the late 2010s. The final corporate owned Blockbuster shut down back in 2014.
The concept of Netflix doing a Blockbuster show is wild to me. Netflix began as a rental service that couldn’t compete with Blockbuster in the late ‘90s. Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings, a.k.a. Netflix’s founders, couldn’t get Blockbuster to buy their company in 2000. So, the duo vowed their revenge and, well, it did end up with them on top. Now here we are with a Netflix show about Blockbuster starring our MCU fave Randall Park. Life continues to be wild.