Feeling nostalgic for Blockbuster Video? You have two choices.

You can travel to Bend, Oregon, to the nation’s last remaining Blockbuster Video store, a full-service video rental outlet featured in the 2020 documentary The Last Blockbuster. You can also travel to Detroit, Michigan (and several other locations nationwide) to take a movie and/or leave a movie at a movie kiosk sporting the familiar logo and friendly Blockbuster blue color.

Filmmaker Jim Toscano, 42, of Sterling Heights, Michigan is the one of the latest franchise owners, installing Michigan’s first Free Blockbuster on Riopelle Street in Detroit’s Eastern Market and is one of only about 16 in the country. 

The kiosks, which are dubbed Free Blockbuster Video, are the brainchild of Brian Morrison, a Los Angeles resident who noticed the empty newspaper kiosks and decided to repurpose them by branding them with the Blockbuster logo and supplying a small inventory of DVDs or VHS cassettes. Others have followed his lead in Oklahoma, Virginia, and elsewhere, using not only movies but books and even popcorn.

People are encouraged to take an item and leave an item, just as with the little free libraries you see in communities across the nation. In Richmond, Virginia, a kiosk recently was stocked with everything from VHS copies of 1993’s Demolition Man, to 1984’s The Terminator, to a box of Skittles.

“There are a lot of abandoned newspaper boxes around L.A.,” Morrison told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “We’re a city that loves movies, and free movie boxes seemed like a great way to rehabilitate commercial blight.”

Morrison’s site, FreeBlockbuster.org, provides artwork for those looking to repurpose the kiosks, which have often been abandoned by area newspapers. Those that are no longer being stocked with papers may be marked for removal by the city, though that depends on local laws.

Toscano tells The Detroit News that he came up with the idea to expand the idea to Detroit while out in Philadelphia, and found the perfect location for his creation. “I found an old newspaper box in a dilapidated shopping center,” he explained. “It actually had a can of beer in the inside when I went to check it out. I resurrected it and turned it into the Blockbuster box.”

Toscano says he assumed that creating the box would only take a day, but it required more time than he imagined. “The box actually needed a lot of work,” he laughed. “We had to sand down the old stickers, paint, add new Plexiglas, along with some stenciling.”

Toscano believes this is a great opportunity for filmmakers to get their work out by donating copies of their movies to the Blockbuster Box. A filmmaker himself, Toscano explains that “it would be cool to see B and C movies inside the box. Also, independent films would be great to see inside. This box can be a new stream for independent filmmakers to get the support that they need to market their movie.”

Toscano tells the Detroit Metro Times that since installing it, he has watched people crowd around it and discuss movies, like they once did in video stores. Once his @freeblockbusterdetroit Instagram account started to take off, he joked with his co-worker that maybe they stumbled onto a good business idea: a place to rent movies. He plans to open a second kiosk in the area soon.