Netflix Just Sent Out Their Last DVD, And It's An Oscar-Nominated Remake
The DVD rental era of Netflix is officially over, and though the streaming giant's shift away from home media has been a long time coming, it's still tough not to get nostalgic about it. Netflix itself is remembering the good times today, posting a video to its official YouTube account titled "Long Live the Red Envelope Era | Farewell to DVDs." Deadline also revealed the title of the final Netflix DVD ever sent — Joel and Ethan Coen's "True Grit" remake, from 2010. Ironically, "True Grit" can currently be streamed on Paramount+ and Showtime, but for many of the films that circulated through the hands of movie lovers during the company's 25-year tenure, that's not the case.
Netflix began in 1997 and was already shipping DVDs a year later. The first movie the company ever sent was apparently Tim Burton's "Beetlejuice," meaning the rental service's beginning and end were both marked by dark comedies featuring excellent performances from young actresses (Winona Ryder in "Beetlejuice," Hailee Steinfeld in "True Grit"). I wish I could say there's some thematic resonance to the final title, but "True Grit" is just a much-loved movie that some lucky subscriber will get to see (maybe for the first time) 13 years after its release. The Western film famously got nominated for 10 Oscars and took home zero, but it's still applauded for its fresh spin on the Charles Portis novel of the same name, plus great turns by Steinfeld, Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin, and more.
It's the end of an era
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos posted on Instagram this morning, writing, "Today, after 25 years, we ship our last DVD." The executive continued: "Those iconic red envelopes were so loved that we shipped more than 5 billion of them to cities and towns, big and small that otherwise would have had no access to the variety of films and television shows we made available." He's right, but to position Netflix as a bastion of accessibility at this point feels a bit oversimplified.
In 2013, Netflix began pumping out original streaming content that quickly made it one of the most popular entertainment companies on earth. In the years that followed, physical media fell out of fashion thanks in part to the dominance of companies like Netflix. At the same time, major streamers began culling historically significant titles from their libraries in favor of shiny new originals, making some movies tougher to find than ever. What's more, Netflix has consistently refused to give many of its originals their own home media releases, meaning they exist only on Netflix and can become unavailable at any time. Netflix's DVD service countered this phenomenon in a small but important way, as movies that weren't on Netflix's website were sometimes available in hard copy form.
Regardless of the circumstances surrounding its demise, Netflix's DVD service was losing money for years before it ended. Its 2022 revenue totaled about $146 million according to The Hollywood Reporter, a steep drop from the billion-dollar figure touted in 2012. The end of the Netflix DVD era is as sad as it is inevitable, but anyone who stayed subscribed until the very end may still have one last surprise in their mailboxes: Netflix apparently sent some of its users as many as 10 surprise DVDs from their queue.