DVD Sales: New Releases Light Up the Sales Chart
July 13, 2010
A trio of new releases led the way on the sales chart this week with Percy & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief topping the chart.
It sold 823,000 units over its opening week for consumer spending at retail of $13.99 million.
Hot Tub Time Machine opened in second place with 431,000 units / $7.33 million, which is in line with expectations.
On the other hand, The Crazies was a little weaker with opening week sales of 249,000 / $3.73 million; however, it did well on high definition.
Alice in Wonderland grew by 32% to 222,000 units over the week to lift its totals to 3.44 million units / $65.40 million after a month of release.
The Book of Eli fell from first to fifth with 176,000 / $3.85 million for the week and 1.26 million units / $27.89 million after three.
The other other new releases were both TV on DVD with The Closer: Season Five debuting in 14th place with 58,000 units / $1.50 million.
Lastly, Eureka: Season 3.5 opened in 20th place with 41,000 units / $785,000 for the week.
For shows not on network TV these are very solid results.
Blu-ray sales were up 15% for the week to $17.4 million, according to Home Media Magazine, which is especially impressive for this time of year.
In fact, this is up 62% from last year, despite DVD sales dropping by 1%.
I'm amazed DVD sales were lower when you look at the chart from last year.
Compared to DVD, Blu-ray sales represented 11% of total sales and 20% of the top twenty comparison, so there's nothing to complain about there.
The best selling Blu-ray of the week was Percy & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief with approximately 250,000 units sold.
Hot Tub Time Machine was in second place with 170,000 units sold, which is high for this type of film, while The Crazies sold close to 110,000 units, or nearly 32% of total sales.
There's still talk that Blu-ray is a niche market, but when first run releases, even R-rated comedies, can sell more than 25% of their total units in Blu-ray, then that's beyond niche.
It's a mainstream format; it isn't the dominate format, but it is mainstream.
Filed under: Video Sales, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, The Crazies, Hot Tub Time Machine, Alice in Wonderland, The Book of Eli