No Twilight at Kmart

In the retail world, new release movies are typically placed on the shelves in electronic departments on Tuesdays. Occasionally, a production company will choose to release a film on a different day for a variety of reasons. A recent blockbuster hit, Twilight, was released on March 21, which happened to be a Saturday.

The movie is based on the book series written by Stephenie Meyer. The series highlights the love story of Bella, an ordinary teenage girl, who falls in love with Edward, a modern day vampire. Avid readers of the series were ecstatic about the making of the movie. Twilight the movie made $70.5 million in it's opening weekend. 

I was really excited about the DVD release of the movie. I knew that Twilight lovers around the country would be standing in line to get their copy. Retail stores would be able to bank on America's love for the Cullens and sale a lot of copies...with the exception of Kmart. 

The day after the release, I went into work and rushed back to the electronics department. New releases are usually played over the television system there. Knowing how much the associate working in this department loves the Twilight series, I expected it to be playing. I was disappointed when I found out that not only was the movie not playing, but Kmart had no intentions of selling the movie. Twilight was nowhere to be seen in the upcoming weekly advertisement, and there were no copies in the stock room.

The lack of the major release was weird. Upon research, I have found that the studio, Summit Entertainment, has exclusive release rights with Target, Walmart and Best Buy. Summit told the Sears/Kmart corporation that they could only sell the two-disc version of the movie, not the single disc. Since the single disc version is the top seller, Sears/Kmart decided to not do business with Summit for this release.

It's a sad week at Kmart. 

Josh (electronics worker) is upset about not having Twilight.