September 14, 2026
Provided image/Dylan Wise/Little Movie Store
Dylan and Keri Wise are inputting roughly 20,000 titles into their video rental library, but only about 7,000 will be on display at Little Movie Store when it opens.
Every night for the past couple weeks, Dylan and Keri Wise have had a date with a few Home Depot boxes of DVDs.
The Passyunk Square couple sorts through the stacks of thrillers, comedies and foreign films, affixing a barcode to each and scanning it into their Shopify app. Some get stickers indicating a rental, others are placed in a pile for sale. They will all soon live inside Little Movie Store, a video rental shop opening at 2001 S. 10th St. in October — exact date TBD.
All told, the Wises are sitting on some 20,000 titles. But customers will see roughly 7,000 on the shelves when the store opens, with sections dedicated to new releases, children's films, action and other genres. The rest will be searchable in Little Movie Store's online database, so that if someone really wants, say, "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement" and can't find it out front, one of the Wises can fetch it from the basement.
"It's just making sure that the place feels comfortable and not overwhelming for somebody to walk into," Dylan explained. "I never really like it when I go into a store and there's piles and piles and piles and you've gotta crouch down to get things."
The physical media fans of Philadelphia have been buzzing since the Wises announced their intention to open a video rental shop earlier this summer. They already had much of the library — a combination of their personal collection, a friend's personal collection, thrift store finds and eBay and Facebook Marketplace purchases — but would-be customers added their own discs to the database after Dylan began soliciting donations on Instagram. Boutique home video labels like Criterion, Arrow Films, MVD Entertainment and A24 also supplied new releases after the Wises became approved resellers.
That means the store will be getting fresh inventory each week, and not just from those distributors. Dylan has already been fielding direct messages from social media followers asking for specific titles, and when he can't find them in the system, he promises to track them down himself.
"I'm trying to figure out a good way of requesting a title, either through the website or just through DMs," he said. "I want to be able to be the place that people can ask for something and we're able to get it for them."
This principle is paying off. While Dylan and Keri are just finishing the floors at their storefront, they already have 465 people on the waitlist for annual memberships. Priced at $160, they allow customers to check out three titles at a time, claim 10% off purchases from the sales or candy rack and score a free movie on their birthdays — all with a physical card.
Customers who purchase an annual membership with Little Movie Store will receive a physical card to rent films.
Provided image/Dylan Wise/Little Movie Store
Their choices are mostly DVDs, but also 4K discs, Blu-rays, VHS tapes and even LaserDiscs. While the Wises expect some customers will have video game consoles at home that play the first three formats, they're working on building up a small library of media players for members to rent. They have leads on VCRs and DVD players. The search for a LaserDisc player is still ongoing.
Across these formats, Little Movie Store boasts a substantial collection of thrillers, comedies and action movies, including forgotten direct-to-video films from the '90s. It will carry the entire James Bond franchise and collected works of Penn Valley native M. Night Shyamalan, as well as "Dumb and Dumber," "Malcolm X," "Parasite," and "The Secret Agent," one of the most recent Oscar contenders for best picture and best international feature. Dylan is still looking for a coveted VHS copy of "Eraserhead," but he has a rare DVD of one-time Philly resident (and full-time Philly hater) David Lynch's short films. Parents will even find Netflix's "KPop Demon Hunters," an ironic selection given that Little Movie Store's business model is a direct challenge to streaming platforms, where every title is ephemeral.
The Wise family will launch memberships at the Core Memories market at Frankie's Summer Place on Sept. 20, ahead of the store's official opening. They don't know how many of the 465 people on the waitlist will show up to claim a "founding member" bundle, but they're eager to meet some of the movie fans who've been flooding their Instagram page. They make up for the occasional snide comment about the relevance of a rental shop in 2026.
"Anytime we have a video that gets a few thousand views, there's always going to be a comment of somebody who says something like, 'I don't even have a DVD player,'" Dylan said. "Yeah, well, then this isn't for you. I don't walk by every yoga place and say, 'I don't even have a mat.' It's like, oh, it's not for me.
"So there are those people who don't get it, but I get people reaching out to me all the time asking, 'Will you please rent VCRs?'"
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