Big Mac, fries, and a movie

MINNEAPOLIS -- The big red vending machine at the McDonald's whirrs and hums and spits out rental DVDs of ''Chicken Little" and ''King Kong" -- and maybe, if McDonald's is lucky, profits.

Machines run by McDonald's Corp. subsidiary Redbox Automated Retail have popped up in hundreds of the company's restaurants in six cities in an experiment to see whether they drive more customers into the stores.

''We think it's a tremendous opportunity," said Greg Waring, Redbox's vice president of marketing. ''We think we're providing a new model for the industry that is going to be difficult for the traditional retailers to compete against."

About the size of a soda machine, each Redbox holds 500 disks, usually 50 to 60 titles, and includes a touch screen so customers can pick a movie, and a credit-card reader for paying the $1-a-night fee. They don't take cash. Customers return the movies at the machine.

Signs near the machines promote its movies -- kids' titles down low, movies for grown-ups on top. Redbox staffers load newly released DVDs each Tuesday. Redbox workers at company headquarters in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., can monitor which titles are renting the most in each machine and adjust their selection accordingly.

Redbox isn't waiting to see how the McDonald's experiment turns out. It has placed the machines in 75 grocery stores, and has signed agreements for 400 more grocery locations, including Stop & Shop and Giant stores owned by Royal Ahold NV in the Northeast.