Twilight bites 3 million DVD, Blu-ray buyers

UPDATE: Thousands turn out to glimpse stars at midnight sales

By Marcy Magiera and Danny King -- Video Business, 3/27/2009

MARCH 27 | UPDATE: The first weekend of spring brought an outpouring of young love for Summit Home Entertainment’s Twilight, which set one-day DVD sales records at retailers including Wal-Mart and Borders and was snapped up at about 5,800 midnight parties—the most for any title in about five years.

Summit said it sold 3.1 million copies of the modern vampire tale in the first day following the title’s midnight release on Saturday, March 21. According to the company, that number includes only consumer purchases of DVD and Blu-ray Disc copies in the U.S., and no Canadian or rental channel sales.

That number puts Twilight’s first-day sales on par with those of Warner Home Video’s The Dark Knight, the top title of last year, which far outpaced Twilight in theaters. Dark Knight’s U.S. box-office take was $530 million; Twilight’s was $191 million.

Stores nationwide stayed open past midnight Saturday morning to sell the title as soon as it became available. The midnight sales spanned Blockbuster, Borders, Hot Topic, F.Y.E., Hastings Entertainment and Wal-Mart locations.

Cast members made appearances at some stores, with 2,500 fans showing up in Salt Lake City to see Rachelle Lefevre (Victoria) at a Wal-Mart; 2,000 people in Los Angeles to see Ashley Greene (Alice) at Hot Topic; more than 1,000 fans in Dallas for director Catherine Hardwicke at Wal-Mart; 700 fans lined up in New York for Edi Gathegi (Laurent); and 500 fans in Chicago for Nikki Reed (Rosalie), according to Summit.

Wal-Mart set a companywide single-day DVD sales record, with some of its stores’ release parties attracting more than 1,000 Twilight fans, according to a spokeswoman. The mass merchant also said the $191 million U.S. box-office hit represented its largest consumer pre-order ever. Wal-Mart is the exclusive sell-through retailer for the single-DVD, which it priced at $17. The retailer staged midnight events in about 2,400 stores, with an exclusive fan greeting filmed on the set of Twilight’s sequel, New Moon, broadcast exclusively through its in-store TV network.

Summit said Twilight’s first-day sales ranked it among the Top 5 best first-day DVD releases over the past two years, along with Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End; Warner’s The Dark Knight and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; and Paramount Home Entertainment’s Transformers.

Hot Topic attracted 2,000 people to a Twilight release party at its Hollywood store and 500 people to its Chicago store, Pali Research analyst Amy Noblin wrote in a note to clients.

Summit co-chairmen Rob Friedman and Patrick Wachsberger said in a statement issued on Sunday: “The Saturday release in conjunction with the groundbreaking retail events across the country have proven to be overwhelmingly successful, which in turn benefited Twilight fans as well as our retail partners. Home entertainment president Steve Nickerson, the home entertainment group and the entire family at Summit are to be commended for the conceptualization and execution of this unique approach.”

“We are incredibly appreciative that Twilight fans came out to once again support this film at our midnight events across the nation,” said Steve Nickerson, Summit Home Entertainment president. “With such successful first-day sales, it is apparent that our fans remain passionate about the Twilight saga and want to own a piece of the Edward and Bella story they have come to love. We look forward to the continued success for both the home entertainment and retail sales of this property as a whole.”

In addition to the Saturday release, Summit has taken a highly fragmented approach to retail distribution of the title, making the basic single-DVD for sale only at Wal-Mart, the Blu-ray Disc available only at Target and Best Buy and an elaborate two-disc special edition with exclusive content available only at Borders.

“We were extremely pleased with the sales performance of Twilight,” said Victor Fuentes, VP and divisional merchandise manager at Hastings. “Our stores executed the most fun and successful reservation and midnight sales event of any DVD title in the history of Hastings. All of our initiatives, including the large Twilight book fan base built through our stores, made Twilight sales bigger than Dark Knight standard DVD sales in the first four days of release.”

However, Fuentes said, “We had to explain to customers that Blu-ray was only available at two other retailers. Regardless, these loyal Hastings Twilight fans bought the standard version but could have easily been upgraded to buying Blu-ray. Instead, they purchased the standard DVD, counter to what we are trying to do as an industry.”

Jennifer Netherby contributed.