Home Market Numbers: Walt Disney Shorts Come Up a Little Short

September 13, 2015

Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films Collection

A huge number of new releases from August 18th reached the top 30 on the combined DVD and Blu-ray chart for August 23rd. However, none of them could overtake Home, which rose to first place with 216,000 units / $3.89 million for the week, giving it four-week totals of 2.09 million / $38.58 million. It became just the sixth film to sell more than 2 million units during 2015.

Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films Collection opened in second place with 178,000 units / $4.18 million, all of which was from Blu-ray. This isn't a bad start for a release like this, but I was hoping for more. Insurgent fell to third place with 153,000 units / $2.42 million for the week and 1.31 million units / $20.99 million after a month of release. This is roughly the same as Divergent sold during its first week of release. NCIS: Season 12 opened in fifth place with 65,000 units / $2.01 million. Its opening week Blu-ray share was just 4.5%. No wonder so few TV on DVD releases are coming out on Blu-ray. Although to be fair, the target audience for NCIS is decidedly older than network TV, so they are far less likely to have Blu-ray players.

Once Upon a Time: Season 4 opened in seventh place with 61,000 units / $2.02 million. Its opening week Blu-ray share was 25%, which is great for a TV on DVD release. The Blacklist: Season 2 just missed the top ten opening in eleventh place with 43,000 units / $1.50 million. Its opening week Blu-ray share was 32%, which again is excellent for a TV on DVD release. Up next was a trio of new releases, all of which sold 38,000 units, more or less. Strangerland sold just over 38,000 generating $465,000 in revenue. Its opening week Blu-ray share was 19%, which is fine for a drama that opened in limited release. Vendetta is an action film, so you would think its opening week Blu-ray share would be a lot better, but it only managed 23% from 38,000 units / $502,000. Little Boy is a live-action family film and these tend to do very poorly on Blu-ray. However, its opening week Blu-ray share was 29%. That's not great, but is is better than expected.

The overall Blu-ray chart was mixed, to be polite. Compared to last week, there were 2.0% more units sold and 14% higher revenue. However, compared to last year... The Amazing Spider-Man 2 sold more than the entire market did this week, resulting in declines of 44% in terms of units and 51% in terms of revenue. The DVD market was also mixed, worse compared to last week, but better compared to last year. This resulted in an overall Blu-ray share of 36%, compared to 30% for last week and 43% when compared to last year.

The overall DVD chart fell 22% in terms of units when compared to last week, but only 4.4% in terms of revenue. On the other hand, compared to last year, DVD sales were way down, falling 23% in terms of units and 24% in terms of revenue.

The new releases for next week will be led by The Walking Dead: Season 5; however, this is not a good thing. Last year, the new releases included The Walking Dead, but it only managed third place on the combined chart. (This includes second place on DVD and third place on Blu-ray.) 2015 is going to lose in the year-over-year comparison by quite a margin.

- Combined Blu-ray and DVD Chart

Filed under: Video Sales, Home, The Divergent Series: Insurgent, Little Boy, Strangerland, Vendetta, Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films Collection