A group of Honors freshmen are making dozens of calls seeking to obtain an abandoned Redbox kiosk from any local business they can win over.
Redbox was a DVD rental company founded in 2002. Their 24,000 iconic red kiosks once occupied storefronts across the United States, offering a convenient automated video rental service.
When entertainment company Chicken Soup for the Soul purchased Redbox in 2022, they did their best to keep the company afloat, but it ultimately came to an end by filing for bankruptcy in June 2024 under a staggering debt reaching nearly one billion dollars.
The struggling company’s filing was updated from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy to a Chapter 7 liquidation in July, meaning their employees were laid off and their assets were liquidated to pay off the debt.
The bankruptcy trustee decided removing the kiosks would be too expensive and advised partnering companies to dispose of them however they wished. This decision left thousands upon thousands of forsaken Redboxes unattended at storefronts across the nation.
Opportunistic hobbyists and enthusiasts have taken advantage of the mass desertion to, with store permission, take forgotten kiosks for themselves.
Obtaining a Redbox machine is quite the boon, with each machine holding up to 700 DVDs free for anyone who disassembles it. Many curious tinkerers would be satisfied to simply poke around inside to see how one works.
Several of these hunters already managed to dump the operating system and write software for the machines. Continuing what has become a running joke in tinkering communities, some modders even ran the classic DOS game, Doom (1993), on one of these devices.
Seth Peace, a freshman mechanical engineering major in the Honors program at Oklahoma Christian University, was inspired by what he saw online and is coordinating his own search effort.
“What we’ve been doing is calling up local companies to ask if they wouldn’t mind giving us their Redbox, because what is cooler than having a Redbox?” Peace said. “I was planning on keeping it in our dorm, and then we would have a widely expanded range of movies that we could watch. Basically everything inside of it would be fair game.”
In order to store the kiosk at Davisson Hall, the dedicated Honors dorm, Peace is seeking permission from his Resident Director.
“I think she thought that it was a joke when I pitched it to her. Now, all of us need to show up to her and ask. That way she knows it’s not a joke because we’re all there,” Peace said.
Despite their dedication, Peace and his friends have called dozens of businesses to no avail.
“By my count, we’ve called over 30 businesses, and all of them have rejected us,” Peace said. “We’ve called Walgreens, we’ve called Dollar Generals, we’ve called McDonald’s, which is—fun fact—where Redbox got its start.”
The companies Peace contacted have cited a variety of reasons not to bestow permission.
“For some, it’s a liability issue. They say that they can’t have people who aren’t trained removing the machines because they are 500 to 800 pound hunks of metal. If that were to fall on somebody, it would probably be pretty bad for them,” Peace said.
A Redbox machine can weigh up to 890 lbs—nearly half of one ton. Online guides recommend transporting them using an appliance dolly: a furniture mover designed for heavy appliances such as refrigerators, or, in this case, a DVD rental kiosk.
In the event that, for whatever reason, no business is willing to turn over their neglected Redbox, Peace has a backup plan:
“Our backup plan is trying to find a local scrapyard which is taking the Redboxes and seeing if we can take it off of their hands,”Peace said. “Otherwise, they’re just going to have to destroy it, which is, of course, not very eco-friendly and is also anti-preservation.”
Peace has been sick recently, delaying his pursuit of this venture, but he is now ready to pursue new leads as they surface. The hunt is on.
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