Movie Village hits eject button on DVDs

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Movie Village, the video rental store known for its obscure titles, is going out of business with a liquidation sale.

New owner Greg Tonn apologized for having to “write the obituary” of the Osborne Village video store that took the road less travelled in securing lesser-known and edgy movies.

But Tonn said the movie rental side of the business has given way to movie streaming services such as Netflix and isn’t coming back.

“The only reason Movie Village was surviving was its association with Music Trader,” Tonn said.

He was referring to Movie Village taking up residence inside the Music Trader store, also in Osborne Village, in 2012, after its former location was torn down.

The writing was on the wall when Tonn purchased the stores in December. Tonn, the owner of the Into the Music store in the Exchange District, is converting the Osborne location into a second Into the Music store.

When Tonn took over Jan. 1, he assumed a stock of about 35,000 DVDs and it’s now down to the low 20,000s. “We’ve got 10 days to go to get rid of a lot of DVDs,” he said.

The DVDs are now selling at 60 per cent off and will go for 70 per cent off starting Friday.

Prices will drop to 80 per cent off starting Mar. 30. After that, they will be sold online, although a site isn’t set up yet.

“We’re not going to just put them in the garbage Dumpster,” Tonn said.

Some of the stock includes TV shows such as the Sopranos, the Wire, the Mentalist, Matlock, the Man from U.N.C.L.E., Magnum P.I., It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and loads of British TV series.

There are movie sections for science fiction, horror, action, comedy, and sections by actor, such as about 30 movies under Robert De Niro’s name, and about a dozen by director Guillermo del Toro, whose recent The Shape of Water won the Academy Award for best picture.

“It’s a very eclectic, artsy video store,” Tonn said. “Of course, its reputation was unsurpassed. Just the scope of what they had in that store was amazing and still is. There is some pretty amazing stuff sitting out on the shelves right now. “

Tonn was contacted last September by David Ringer, the founder of Movie Village.

“He was retiring and approached me really about buying the inventory. He didn’t think I would buy the business. As I got the financials for the last four years, I could see the music end of the business was holding its own, but the video business was dropping like a stone.”

Movie rentals were always Movie Village’s main source of revenue. But of late, DVDs took up almost half of the store’s floor space but accounted for just 20 per cent of revenue, and that was falling. “I realized if we removed the movies and filled the space with music, the store would do better,” Tonn said.

So, Tonn purchased the store with the idea of keeping just the music.

Tonn has a successful track record in an area of retail where few people can claim longevity. He has been in the used music business for 31 years, starting in 1987. “It’s just being able to walk that tightrope. A lot of years it wasn’t very lucrative. Now it’s a little more comfortable,” he said.

Free Press arts reporter Randall King once described Movie Village as a place for “hardcore cinephiles” where customers “could find a Blu-Ray copy of Drive, but you could also score a Criterion edition of Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring for rental or purchase.”

Filmmaker Guy Maddin has been a longtime Movie Village fan. “One could sift through all my tax receipts for the last quarter-century and see the history of my relationship with the place, the history of my movie education,” he once told the Free Press.

The last day of the DVD sale is March 31. When Into the Music’s Osborne location reopens the following week, it will be a music store only.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca