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Redbox

American company specializing in DVD and Blu-ray rentals via automated retail kiosks

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History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ7305489
Source-derived summary

Redbox was an American video rental and streaming media company, based in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, west of Chicago. Redbox specialized in automated DVD rental kiosks, and operated transactional and ad-supported streaming video and television services. From 2022 until its liquidation, Redbox was a wholly owned subsidiary of Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment.

Redbox kiosks, which rented and sold films on DVD and Blu-ray, were located at retail stores, including convenience stores, supermarkets, and pharmacies. At its peak in the early 2010s, the company operated kiosks at more than 34,000 locations, and controlled more than half of the US DVD rental market.

In June 2024, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; the following month, the company's case was converted to Chapter 7 liquidation. As part of ongoing liquidation proceedings, Redbox's online streaming services and mobile app ceased functioning in July 2024.

History

Founding under McDonald's

Redbox Automated Retail LLC was initially developed in Chicago as a part of "Project 361", a McDonald's business expansion initiative. John Sexton Abrams, a strategy executive at McDonald's, designed the original concept as an immersive kiosk leveraging McDonald's product supply chain and geographic footprint to provide 24/7 access to fresh dairy and other products. Initially, the kiosks sold a range of goods under the name TikTok Easyshops.

Editorial summary

“Redbox” enters the record as american company specializing in DVD and Blu-ray rentals via automated retail kiosks. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Redbox, American and company can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2022, 2024—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2003. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Redbox, American and company.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Redbox” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Redbox, American and company provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7305489. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2022 and 2024.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Redbox”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Redbox primary sources, Redbox archive and Redbox research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Redbox”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Redbox” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.