Jay Douglas, the former SVP Acquisitions at Anchor Bay Entertainment and the driving force behind the company’s late 1990s rise as a “Criterion Collection for cult films,” has died. He was 65. Douglas died of an apparent heart attack on Tuesday in Green Valley, AZ, according to former associates and social media…

No more discs – the Television Academy has announced that it will eliminate DVD screeners from its award nominating and voting process for the 2020 Emmy eligibility period. The Academy becomes the first major Hollywood organization to announce the move. "This is a wonderful opportunity for the Academy to take an…

Overall home entertainment spending by U.S. consumers climbed 11.5% in 2018 to a record $23.3 billion, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, an industry consortium. Announcing the preliminary annual figures during CES, the DEG noted an especially strong fourth quarter, when spending increased 13% to $6.3…

A reunion special featuring several cast members from HBO’s now-wrapped epic Game of Thrones, shot earlier this year in Northern Ireland and hosted by Conan O’Brien, is headed straight to video — but it’s not as bad as it sounds. HBO confirmed Wednesday that the special, shot in Belfast earlier this year, will appear…

Sesame Workshop’s formidable home entertainment library will be handled by Shout! Factory, giving the indie distributor certain exclusive Sesame Street rights in North America. Under a multi-year deal, Shout! will control DVD and Blu-ray and VOD, plus select digital rights to more than 150 active titles and programs…

And then there was one. Blockbuster Video, once a ubiquitous part of America’s landscape and leisure time, is down to one Oregon location after it was announced today that its two remaining Alaska stores are closing. The final Blockbuster video stores in Anchorage and Fairbanks are closing their rental business on…

The legal battle between Redbox and Disney — a case that stemmed from download codes to Disney movies being sold at discount prices, as Deadline was the first to report — is getting more intense. The movie kiosk company filed court documents accusing the Burbank entertainment giant of copyright abuse and unfair…

The US rights for the thriller-western The Scent of Rain & Lightning have been acquired by SP Releasing. The film stars Maika Monroe (It Follows), Maggie Grace (Taken) and Bonnie Bedelia (Parenthood) and is out in theaters and on-demand Feb. 16 through SP’s output deal with Echo Bridge Releasing, with the DVD release…

Redbox has extended its distribution deal with Universal Pictures for rental and sell-through at the company’s network of 40,000 kiosks as well as its nascent on-demand streaming service. The studio, which previously had preserved a 28-day window between its own home entertainment releases and when they would debut on…

Bryan Cranston is living in London right now, starring in the National Theatre’s production of Network for director Ivo van Hove. And, earlier this month, his new film Last Flag Flying, directed by Richard Linklater, opened in the US. The two projects could not be more different. In the first, he is the mad as…

With Universal’s The Fate Of The Furious getting its digital release today, original franchise star Michelle Rodriguez took to Instagram to tout it — sorta. What it ended up being was a gentle but notable nudge seen by her 3.8 million followers to Universal and the series’ producers to “show some love to the women of…

Disney’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first spinoff feature in the Lucasfilm canon, will be available via Digital HD as early March 24 and on Blu-ray on April 4. To date, the movie has amassed $1.05 billion at the worldwide box office. April is a big month for Lucasfilm: The annual Star Wars Celebration is set…