Redbox owner Chicken Soup for the Soul files for bankruptcy

[Pelican Press 0]

Redbox owner Chicken Soup for the Soul files for bankruptcy

Richard Drew/AP

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment executives ring the opening bell at the Nasdaq in 2017.

New York
CNN
 — 

The parent company of Redbox, those distinctive, red-******** kiosks at grocery stores that sell or rent DVDs, has filed for bankruptcy after enduring months of financial struggle.

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment (

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) revealed in a filing that it has nearly $1 billion in debt and owes millions of dollars to several entertainment companies including the BBC and Sony Pictures, plus to retailers ranging from Walmart to

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.

Filings show that the company took on about $325 million in debt

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from private equity giant Apollo Global Management. The plan was to make it into an entertainment conglomerate, combining the DVD rental business with its free streaming services, like Crackle, the entertainment platform once owned by Sony.

Those plans didn’t pan out, hindered by dual Hollywood strikes that limited production of fresh content and the decline of people renting physical DVDs that even forced rival

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to

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last year.

CSSE declined to comment.

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previously reported that Redbox hadn’t paid employees for a week, and medical benefits have been suspended. Filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy could help the company fix those issues if its plans are approved by a court in Delaware.

The company’s publishing arm, which produces those ubiquitous self-help books that were once a worldwide phenomenon, isn’t affected by the bankruptcy filing of its entertainment unit.

The number of Redbox kiosks has grown to about 34,000 across the US, largely located at grocery and ***** stores. Since its 2002 launch, Redbox has rented its 1 billion discs at prices cheaper than cable, according to its website.

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#Redbox #owner #Chicken #Soup #Soul #files #bankruptcy

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