DVD Sales: Searching for Treasure on the Home Market
February 14, 2012
While there were a lot of new releases on this week's DVD sales chart, it was clearly a case of quantity over quality as even the best selling release was merely mediocre. Treasure Buddies was top dog with sales of 381,000 units / $6.47 million during its opening week. This is roughly in line with the previous installment, but below average for the franchise.
Drive was relatively close behind with 313,000 units / $4.87 million. Hopefully it performed better on Blu-ray, as this was not a great start on DVD. Real Steel fell to third place with 265,000 units / $5.30 million for the week giving it totals of 962,000 units / $17.43 million after two. It wasn't that long ago that even a second-tier release would sell more than 1 million units in the opening week, but the market has really atrophied in recent years. In Time opened in fourth place with 263,000 units / $3.94 million, which is weak, even compared to its theatrical run. The Thing barely managed a spot in the top five during its opening week with 136,000 units / $2.37 million. It was a non-factor for it theatrical run and now it's struggling on the home market.
There were three more new releases to chart, but they were barely worth mentioning. Dream House placed ninth, but with just 90,000 units / $1.62 million while The Big Year was right behind with 82,000 units / $1.23 million. The final new release to chart was The Double, which only managed 12th place with 58,000 units / $609,000 units. This is not terrible, for a limited release that barely avoided the Mendoza Line during its opening weekend; however, the studio was obviously hoping for a lot more when it gave the film the greenlight.
Filed under: Video Sales, The Thing, The Big Year, Dream House, The Double, Drive, Real Steel, Treasure Buddies, In Time