DVD Sales - Black Friday Keep Retailers Bright
December 14, 2009
The Black Friday numbers are in and while there were a few new releases that placed in the top five on the sale chart this week, the number one release of the week was a holdover. That holdover was Up, which added 1.22 million units / $17.50 million in sales to its three week totals of 6.10 million / $101.39 million making it just the fourth release of the year to reach the $100 million mark on the DVD sales chart this year.
The Dark Knight was first released on DVD last year, but thanks to widespread sales it came within 1% of first place with 1.21 million units sold, which gives it totals of 14.21 million units and $230.02 million. The first of the new releases to chart was Santa Buddies, which placed third with 971,000 units and $14.78 million, which is on par with Space Buddies debut in February. Angels & Demons only managed fourth place with 827,000 units / $12.38 million, which is a huge step back from The Da Vinci Code's opening in 2006. Granted, the DVD market has taken a hit since then with the rise of Blu-ray (and other factors) but this is still a sign that the franchise is in trouble. Rounding out the top five was Four Christmases with 714,000 units and $10.20 million.
The only other new release to chart was Funny People, but that movie disappointed greatly landing in 23rd place with just 196,000 units and $3.50 million.
Blu-ray continued broke records with a massive $69.1 million in sales for the week, which was 46% higher than the previous week and 222% higher than the same week last year. If you were to look for a downside, it would be the comparison to DVD, as Blu-ray slipped to just over 12% of the total market and just under 12% of the top twenty comparison. However, to be fair there were a lot of massive DVD sales, which would throw the balance in the cheaper formats favor. (It's hard for Blu-ray to compete with $5 copies of The Dark Knight, for instance.) There was a virtual tie on top of the Blu-ray sales with both Angels & Demons and Star Trek selling about 350,000 units.
Filed under: Video Sales