Amazon and Warner Bros. are close to settling their movie pricing dispute

Well, that didn’t last long. A couple of weeks after Amazon stopped taking pre-orders for Warner Bros. Blu-ray and DVD movies to extract a better pricing arrangement, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the two sides have reached a truce. Swing by Amazon and you’ll once again find pre-orders for disc-based versions of The Lego Movie, Transcendence, and other upcoming releases. The exact nature of the deal is hush-hush, but it wouldn’t be shocking if Amazon got the upper hand — movies are just a small part of the online retail giant’s business, while Warner Bros. would lose an important source of revenue. Whether or not you approve of Amazon’s tactics, this is good news if you prefer hard copies of movies over downloads and streams. Now if Amazon and Hachette could only negotiate their own peace regarding books.

Amazon.com Inc. has reversed a halt on preorders of movie discs fromTime Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. studio as the two sides near a resolution to a pricing dispute, according to people familiar with the matter. Preorders of forthcoming Warner DVD and Blu-ray releases like “Transcendence” and “300: Rise of an Empire” are again being offered on Amazon.com. Amazon withheld preorders of those titles and some other popular films over the past few weeks as a negotiating tactic with the movie studio. Amazon has long used the tactic to gain leverage with certain suppliers. Most recently, Amazon blocked customers from preordering many books from the Hachette Book Group unit of Lagardere SCA, and delayed shipment of others during talks with the publisher. Amazon had been seeking more favorable financial terms from Warner, according to a person familiar with the matter, though the exact details were unknown. Tough negotiations between Amazon and Hollywood studios have occurred several times in the past, but Amazon never before took the step of blocking preorders, people involved in such talks said. Amazon typically sells DVDs with little, or no, profit margin because it competes with stores like Wal-Mart and Best Buy that sometimes price new releases below their wholesale cost to attract foot traffic.