DVD Sales: New Releases are Not Very Sexy
November 9, 2010
New releases again failed to make much of an impact on this week's sale chart with only three placing in the top 30. However, one of those, Sex and the City 2, did take top spot with 989,000 units and $16.81 million during its opening week. This is weaker than its predecessor opened with, but in line with expectations, more or less.
How to Train Your Dragon was pushed into second place with 436,000 units for the week, but with 3.73 million units / $79.23 million after just three weeks, it is one of the best selling DVDs of 2010. Predators was back in third place with 208,000 units / $3.53 million for the week and 889,000 unit s/ $15.11 million after two. The Girl Who Played with Fire opened in fourth place with 146,000 units / $2.02 million, which is excellent for a limited release. Iron Man 2 rounded out the top five with 131,000 units for the week, lifting its totals to 4.61 million units / $104.15 million.
Just missing the top five was Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Complete Season Two with 117,000 units / $3.38 million. One final note, the Back to the Future Triology DVD was re-released this week and placed 25th with 35,000 units / $1.07 million. This is not that interesting, but its Blu-ray sales were. More on that in a second.
I've mentioned that having a kids movies on the top of the DVD sales chart is no longer a detriment to the overall Blu-ray strength. However, the same can't be said of films like drama or comedies, especially those aimed at woman. Films like Sex and the City 2. So it should come as no surprise that Blu-ray sales were way down this week falling 34% from last week to $21.1 million. This was 21% lower than the same weekend last year; however, last year we had three DVDs selling more than 1 million units, while this week we had none and DVD sales were down 45% year-over-year. This means that compared to DVD, Blu-ray was very healthy, representing 18% of the total market and 29% of the top 20 comparison.
Sex and the City 2 was the best selling Blu-ray of the week with close to 250,000 units, compared to Sex and the City's opening week sales of 60,000 units. I'm more impressed with the opening week sales of the Back to the Future Trilogy Blu-ray, which sold just over 200,000 units, while Beauty and the Beast added just under 200,000 units. The Girl Who Played with Fire sold 50,000 units during its first week of release, which is strong for a limited release, especially a foreign language limited release.
Filed under: Video Sales, Beauty and the Beast, Sex and the City 2, How to Train Your Dragon, Iron Man 2, Flickan som lekte med elden, Predators