The Blockbuster chain that was once a dominant force in the movie industry could be close to shutting its doors, according to Two Way Web on Twitter:

Today the video-rental giant admitted that if it cannot complete the financing deals that it is currently working on, there is a good chance the company may be forced to shut its doors. While the company last week said it was in the process of getting a $250 million revolving loan from creditors, that may be in jeopardy.

Why? The loan apparently has some conditions to it, and Blockbuster is now not sure it can meet them. Even worse, whether the loan goes through are not, it is not even sure that would be enough to save the company.

As a former Blockbuster member, I hope that loan has confusing and excessive late fees.

A couple years ago in Slate, Edward Jay Epstein wrote about how Blockbuster was doomed by two bad decisions -- one on not sharing profits with movie companies on new DVD rentals, and the other on not buying Netflix for $50 million:

The other shoe dropped with the emergence of Netflix as a major online competitor for what remained of the rental market. (Blockbuster turned down the opportunity to buy Netflix for a mere $50 million, instead entering a disastrous home-delivery deal with Enron.) Netflix signed up over 3 million subscribers by 2005 by offering DVDs that could be kept as long as renters liked for a monthly fee. To compete, Blockbuster had to do away with its single biggest profit-earner: charging late fees to customers who kept videos past the due date.

These days, with Netflix, pay-per-view, DVR and Internet viewing of new movies, driving to Blockbuster to rent a movie is becoming as antiquated as popping a tape into the VCR.