Home Market Numbers: Longest Ride Rides Tall

August 3, 2015

The Longest Ride

The new releases for July 14th dominated the combined DVD and Blu-ray chart for July 19. In fact, they took every single spot in the top five. The Longest Ride led the way with 514,000 units / $9.03 million Its opening week Blu-ray share was 24%, which is better than the Blu-ray share of a lot of female-centric dramas.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 was in a distant second place with 289,000 units / $5.39 million. By comparison, the first film sold 1.70 million units during its opening week of release, so clearly even those who saw the movie in the theaters didn't enjoy the movie enough to buy it. On the other hand, its opening week Blu-ray share was 34%, which is good for a comedy. Ex Machina was close behind in third place with 222,000 units / $3.57 million. The film actually placed first on the Blu-ray sales chart and its opening week Blu-ray share was 62%. That would be a huge number for a visually intensive summer blockbuster. It's stunning for a limited release. Speaking of visually intensive summer blockbusters, X-Men: Days of Future Past was re-released on the home market with a "Rogue Cut" and that helped it jump back into fourth place with 147,000 units / $2.38 million for the week. They didn't release breakdowns of the "Rogue Cut" vs. the original release, but one has to assume the massive majority were the new release. Its "opening week" Blu-ray share was 73%. Obviously the people most interested in the double-dip were more likely to have a high definition setup. The final film in the top five was It Follows with 129,000 units / $1.60 million. Its opening week Blu-ray share was 55%, which is amazing for a horror film, especially a limited release horror film.

The only other new release to chart was The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which landed in seventh place with 96,000 units / $1.60 million. Its opening week Blu-ray share was only 17%; however, films aimed at a more mature target demographic tend to have much lower Blu-ray shares, so this isn't surprising.

The overall Blu-ray market was much higher than last week, but lower than last year. Week-over-week, there were 102% more units sold with 109% more revenue generated. That's a stunning amount of growth. Year-over-year, we saw declines of 5.1% in terms of units and 4.3% in terms of revenue. That's not as bad as I thought it would be. DVD sales were not as strong as Blu-ray sales, not even close, which helped the overall Blu-ray share rocket to 37% for the week. That's compared to 23% for last week, although we also saw a Blu-ray share of 37% this week last year. That's an excellent Blu-ray share for this time of year.

The overall DVD market was also higher when compared to last week and lower when compared to last year. There were 4.6% more units sold and the revenue grew by just under 10% when compared to last week. Compared to last year, there were 4.9% fewer units sold, but the revenue dropped by 13%.

Next week's new releases are terrible. There were no first run releases and the top selling new release could be a What We Do in Shadows, which was only a limited release. The next best release is Scooby-Doo! and KISS. The new releases from this week last year had four new releases in the top five on the combined chart. The number one release was Heaven is for Real, which led the way on DVD and Blu-ray. I don't think 2015 has a chance to match last year at the box office.


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Filed under: Video Sales, X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Longest Ride, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, It Follows, Ex Machina, Scooby-Doo! and KISS: Rock and Roll Mystery