DVD Sales: Iron Man Franchise Remains Golden on the DVD Sales Chart
October 12, 2010
New releases walked away with the top two spots on this week's DVD sales chart, as well as four of the top six, and six of the top 30. Leading the way was Iron Man 2 with 2.82 million units generating $64.53 million in revenue during its opening week of release. This is weaker than its predecessor opened with, but the film compensated with stronger Blu-ray sales.
Get Him to the Greek opened well back in second place with 462,000 units / $8.50 million, but Iron Man 2 was somewhat direct competition, so this result is not too bad. Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue was pushed into third place with 382,000 units for the week for a total of 1.30 million units / $24.00 million after two. There are first-run wide releases that struggle to sell that many units this quickly. For instance, Robin Hood made more than $100 million at the box office, but so far has DVD sales of 1.12 million units / $26.08 million after two weeks of release, including 316,000 / $7.55 million this past week. Rounding out the top five was Superman/Batman: Apocalypse with 152,000 units / $2.62 million.
Just missing out on the top five was Family Guy: Partial Terms of Endearment with 126,000 units / $1.26 million. For a single episode release, that sold very well. Well back in 16th place was Frozen with 44,000 units / $462,000. The final new release to chart was Legend of the Seeker: The Complete Second Season in 26th place with 38,000 units / $1.24 million.
For a long, long time now I've been arguing that the inconsistency in Blu-ray sales had more to do with the weak slate of new releases than it did with the format itself. I've also said we would have to wait till Iron Man 2 came out to judge the format's strength. Well, Iron Man 2 came out and Blu-ray is doing fine with total sales of $51.2 million for the week. That's up 123% from last week and 134% from the same weekend last year. Compared to DVD sales, Blu-ray represented 18% of total sales and 30% of the top 20 comparison. Total sales, percent of total market, and the top 20 comparison are all the second best performance for the format this year, second only to the week Avatar came out.
It should come as no surprise that Iron Man 2 led the way, but its sales of 2 million units was still surprisingly strong. This is about three times as many Blu-rays as the original sold during its first week of release two years ago, although both films sold roughly the same number of combined DVD and Blu-ray units. Get Him to the Greek opened in second place with over 150,000 units, which is strong for that type of release, but barely a blip on the radar compared to Iron Man 2.
Filed under: Video Sales, Get Him to the Greek, Robin Hood, Iron Man 2, Frozen, Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue, Superman/Batman: Apocalypse