DVD Sales - New Releases Sink on Sales Chart

June 10, 2008

New releases did not make much of an impact on the home market this week while overall sales slumped dramatically. This is not unusual for this time of year, especially the week after the last winter blockbuster came out. That blockbuster, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, remained in first place on the sales chart, even after collapsing more than 70% to 941,000 units sold. Overall the film has sold 4.43 million units for $70.88 million in revenue, which places it fifth on the yearly chart.

Rambo opened in second place with 780,000 units sold for a $17.59 million opening week, which is on par with expectations. Indiana Jones - The Adventure Collection slipped to third place with 175,000 units sold and $5.67 million; totals so far for re-release of the box set are 964,000 units and $36.90 million. Thanks to a soft decline, 27 Dresses returned to the top five in fourth place, although it only sold 90,000 units for the week. Cleaner opened in fifth place, which is amazing for a direct-to-DVD release. That said, its open week sales of 78,000 units and $1.57 million are not impressive and not too long ago that wouldn't have been enough to reach the top 30. (This is generally the weakest time of year for DVD sales.)

The only other new release to chart was Rambo - The Complete Collector's Set, which sold 51,000 units and pulled in $1.77 million.

Moving on to the format war, Blu-ray sales were down close to 19%, but it still managed 10% of the the 20 / 20 unit comparison and 8% of total sales. Additionally, it was reported that Rambo sold around 250,000 Blu-ray units, which would be one of the best Blu-ray launches of all time. However, since the demise of HD DVD, there hasn't been as much fanfare over Blu-ray sales. This is happening for two reasons. One, there's less need to hype the format. And two, 250,000 units is still very low compared to the home market in general.

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Filed under: Video Sales, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Rambo, Cleaner, 27 Dresses