Home Market has a Bloody Close Race on Top
March 31, 2007
A trio of new releases led the sales chart this week, and those three all managed to place in the top five on the rental charts as well. This includes the new number one film, Blood Diamond with $9.00 million.
Casino Royale slipped to second place down a mere 13% to $8.01 million for the week and $17.21 million in total. Just behind were the other two new releases, Eragon and Rocky Balboa with $7.79 million and $7.68 million respectively. The final film in the top five was The Holiday with $6.57 million for a total of $14.51 million.
No other new release managed to place in the top ten, but Everyone's Hero came awfully close in 11th place with $3.06 million while The Nativity Story wasn't far behind in 13th place with $2.66 million. Further down the list was the direct-to-DVD release First Born, which placed 37th with $920,000.
As stated, the sales chart was dominated by new releases with Eragon leading the way selling almost as many DVDs are the next two releases combined. Those two releases were and Rocky Balboa in second place and Blood Diamond in third. Clearly people were interested in seeing Blood Diamond, but given its much stronger showing on the rental charts, but most people want to try before they buy. Casino Royale fell from first to fourth, but was in striking distance of second place. As on the rental charts, The Holiday rounding out the top five.
Other new releases to chart include Mickey's Great Clubhouse Hunt in seventh. Everyone's Hero and the The Nativity Story opened in ninth and tenth places respectively. Finally, Justice League Unlimited - Season Two placed 14th.
Finally, there are some updates on the Format Wars and Blu-Ray should take a lot of confomrt in this news. Recently The Departed became the first major hit to be released simultaneously on DVD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD and as such became a great marker to the state of the battle. So far the Blu-Ray units has outsold the HD-DVD units by a 2-1 margin. Furthermore, during its first week of release on Blu-Ray, Casino Royale outsold the entire HD-DVD catalogue, and did it by a nearly 2-1 margin. Finally, despite HD-DVD having a healthy head start, it was Blu-Ray that was the first of the two formats to sell more than 1 million units.
At this point the only major holdout on the Blu-Ray format is Universal, while many independents are moving into the format as well. This means by this time next year we could have a winner, and that will be a boon for sales as a lot of people are holding off buying into High Definition until this fight is over.
Filed under: Casino Royale, The Departed, Eragon, Rocky Balboa, The Holiday, Blood Diamond, The Nativity Story, Everyone's Hero