DVD Sales - Simpsons Secure Second Win

January 7, 2008

Since most new releases were released on Sunday, it comes as no real surprise that The Simpsons Movie remained in first place on this week's DVD sales chart. This time around, the film sold 1.05 million units for a two-week total of 3.81 million units while it generated $16.84 million in revenue for a total of $64.98 million. This is a very good start, but lower than expected after its phenomenal theatrical debut.

The first of the new releases this week was Rush Hour 3 with 816,00 units sold for revenue of $15.94 million and The Kingdom was relatively close behind with opening week sales of 704,000 unit and $13.56 million. Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End earned fourth place by selling 689,000 units / $13.67 million over the week, giving the film a best for the year unit sales of 11.67 million. However, it terms of dollars, $237.16 million is still second best to The Transformers. The final film in the top five was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with 657,000 units / $12.97 million in sales for the week for total sales of 7.65 million units / $155.16 million.

American Pie Presents Beta House moved 257,000 units and earned $5.90 million, which is a good start for a direct-to-DVD release. Twelfth place went to Eastern Promises, which sold 229,000 units during its week for opening week sales of $4.76 million. The only other new release to chart was The Heartbreak Kid, which opening in 21st place with just 165,000 units sold for $2.48 million in revenue.

Over on the High Definition side, Blu-Ray won, again, by 61% to 39%, again. In fact, it was the third week in a row at that same ratio. This win was especially significant because it gave Blu-Ray 52 wins in 2007, sweeping the whole year. It was also a major part of Warner Bros.' decision to go Blu-Ray exclusive. That's right, the format war is all but over as Blu-ray now has a massive lead in terms of studio support to go with its software and hardware lead. It will be interesting to see what HD-DVD will do to try and counter this, if anything, but it is very unlikely to be able to recover.

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Filed under: Video Sales, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Simpsons Movie, Rush Hour 3, The Kingdom, The Heartbreak Kid, Eastern Promises