The Last Blockbuster Documentary Trailer Released, Premiere Date Set

PopMotion Pictures, the crew behind the anticipated, crowdfunded documentary film The Last Blockbuster, which charts the legacy of Blockbuster Video and gives a behind-the-scenes look at the last remaining Blockbuster store (in Bend, Oregon), will have its premiere on Friday, May 8 at the Tower Theater in Bend. The screening will be followed by an afterparty at the Blockbuster in Bend. Tickets for the event will go on sale this Monday. The film has been in the works since 2018.

In addition to the premiere date, PopMotion has released the official trailer for the film. A previous iteration of the trailer was cut together in support of the movie’s Kickstarter campaign, but many of the film’s interviews were not yet completed at that stage.

You can check the trailer out below.

According to the movie’s official website, “The Last Blockbuster is a feature length documentary film about the rise and fall of Blockbuster Video and how one small town store managed to outlast a corporate giant.”

“It started last year, and there were still a dozen or so Blockbuster locations left,” director Taylor Morden told me when the film was in production in 2018. “We started filming this thing and I thought, ‘It’s a cool story, there’s not many of these stores left, and we’ll maybe start watching as one by one they start closing.’ And that did happen and then it got sprung on us that the one here in Bend, Orgeon, where we live, is going to be the very last one left, and that gave us a sense of urgency and a renewed sense that this was going to be a great story. Yeah, we were already working on it, but the story has changed since then.”

Mordan and producer Zeke Kamm also set out to locate a missing jock strap donated to one of the Alaska stores by TV host John Oliver — which had gone missing when the store closed — and return it to Bend. They are also not the only ones to find a way to support their local video store: a craft beer was created to celebrate the Bend store.

“Once you meet the people and you find who the characters are, you have to explore that,” Morden said. “We thought maybe it was going to be just about this one store, but then you meet interesting people. We just talked to the man who owned the Alaska stores which closed just before this one, and he’s such a character we just had to include him.”

“I remember sitting there and saying, so many people have worked at Blockbuster, some of them must be hilarious, interesting, famous, whatever,” added Kamm.

The movie was originally set for a May 2019 relese date, but as it became evident that there was a lot of interest, it seems likely more interviews took place, increasing the production and post-production time. There is no official word yet on when the movie will be available on DVD and Blu-ray (and even VHS for some people who backed it at a high enough level on Kickstarter), but it seems likely that shortly after the May premiere party that will happen.