The brilliant Korean movie “OldBoy” used to be carried by both Blockbuster and Amazon.com. However, I’ve started to see many Blockbuster locations discard that title from their inventory. I recently asked a few employees at a few BlockBuster stores for reasons behind such a move, and was told that the decision to remove titles from inventory depended on the demand for the movie and the contract with the companies that market the movie. The reason for not having a movie like OldBoy available at Blockbuster anymore could also be because of that fact that Hollywood is remaking the movie into an English version slated to be released in 2008. More and more foreign movies are being taken off the shelfs quietly at big movie chain stores like Blockbuster and online stores like Amazon, in order to make way and create more demand for the Hollywood remakes.

“Ju-on“, the movie that was remade into “The Grudge“, was not available through Amazon or Blockbuster until the American remake hit the theatres in 2004, even though the original Japanese version had been around since 2000. Same is the case with the sequels to the original “Ju-on”; none of the 3 Japanese sequels to the original Japanese “Ju-on” are available directly from Blockbuster or Amazon, maybe because a sequel to the remake is currently being made. The same thing happened with “Ringu“, the original Japanese movie upon which “The Ring” was based. The Japanese original wasn’t available widely until the Hollywood remake came out, and the original sequels were also not available until the Hollywood sequel to the remake came out. “Kairo“, the original Japanese movie upon which the recent “The Pulse” was based on, was also not available until last week at most of the stores, probably since the remake is now finally out in theatres.

Places like Amazon.com and BlockBuster are not carrying several movies because those titles are currently being remade into American versions. These titles range from the Korean “Mr. Sympathy for Revenge” to the world famous Hong Kong movie “Infernal Affairs“, probably because the former is a prequel story to the original “OldBoy”, and the latter is being remade into a Hollywood remake called “The Departed.” If people get their hands on the foreign titles, those people will probably not want to see the American remakes as they would already know the stories. While Amazon and Blockbuster do not profit from this, and in reality loose customers, movie studios benefit from such control of DVD rental and selling businesses, restricting customer access to certain titles while a remake of those titles is being made. I’m not sure what kind of a leverage the movie studios have over such stores when it comes to the ability to carry foreign titles.

Next time you can’t find a good movie, or a foreign movie, try to hope that Hollywood is making a remake of it, as taking away something from you just to make you pay more later on in the form of a remake of the original that you wanted is such a good reason for not being able to get your hands on a good movie.