DVD Sales - Forbidden Releases are Twice as Sweet

September 21, 2008

New releases dominated the sales chart this week with eight of them charting, including all of the top five. The new number one film was Forbidden Kingdom, which sold 550,000 units during its opening week and generated $12.70 million in sales. Baby Mama was right behind, at least in terms of units sold (548,000). In terms of raw dollars, it brought in $9.86 million during its first week of release. Barbie and the Diamond Castle opened in third place with 318,000 / $4.11 million in sales. Grey's Anatomy - Season Four placed fourth in terms of units with 248,000 sold, but third in terms of dollars at $9.15 million. Smallville - Season Seven was in a similar situation, as it landed in fifth going by units sold at 233,000 and fourth by raw dollars at $8.86 million.

The best of the rest of the new releases was It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Season 3, which opened in 10th place with 88,000 units / $2.29 million. Thomas & Friends: The Great Discovery opened in lucky number 13th place with 51,000 units, pulling in $924,000 during its opening week. Finally, Ugly Betty - The Complete Second Season sold 33,000 units, which was enough for 26th place, but its opening week sales of $1.22 million was enough for 14th place by that metric.

Blu-ray sales declined 13% to $9.2 million for the week, but that was still 7.6% of total sales for both formats, which is better than average for Blu-ray this year. The Top Twenty comparison had Blu-ray down to an 8% share, which indicates it was the top of the charts that showed the most weakness. In fact, the best seller for the week was Forbidden Kingdom, which only generated $1.63 million in sales from 65,500 units sold. On the other hand, Transformers held reasonably well, down to 53,000 units and $1.34 million in sales for two-week totals of 182,000 units and $4.59 million. I doubt next week will be much better, and the same goes for the week after that. But a week later...

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Filed under: Video Sales, Transformers, Baby Mama, The Forbidden Kingdom