Twilight year's best-selling DVD so far
Summit movie sold 5.6 million units, including Blu-ray, in first nine days
By Marcy Magiera -- Video Business, 3/30/2009
MARCH 30 | Summit Home Entertainment’s Twilight sold 5.2 million DVD and Blu-ray Disc units in its first week on shelves to become the top seller of the year so far.
Summit said consumers purchased 5.2 million copies of the modern vampire tale in the U.S. during in the first week following the title's midnight release on Saturday, March 21. Including last weekend, the title’s nine-day take was 5.6 million units, according to Summit.
A common yardstick used by studios is 20,000 units in first-week sales per $1 million at the box office, which would put the expectation for Twilight, with a $191 million box-office take, at 3.8 million units sold in its first week. At 5.2 million units, Twilight performed more like a $260 million theatrical release.
Summit’s home entertainment chief, Steve Nickerson, attributed the title’s success in large part to its Saturday release, noting that many retailers would not have staged midnight parties for a standard Tuesday release. “These [fan] girls would rather have a community event,” said Nickerson. “All we did was help facilitate what the fans would want.”
The title sold less than 5% of its units on Blu-ray, Summit said, pointing to the movie's overwhelming appeal to females. The majority of the audience for Blu-ray is still male. However, the Blu-ray version of Twilight was only available at Target and Best Buy.
About 5,800 stores nationwide—spanning Blockbuster, Borders, Hot Topic, F.Y.E., Hastings Entertainment and Wal-Mart—stayed open past midnight on Saturday, March 21, to sell Twilight as soon as it became available.
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; and more than 1,000 fans in Dallas for director Catherine Hardwicke at Wal-Mart.
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 3.1 million-unit 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 Home Video’s The Dark Knight and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; and Paramount Home Entertainment’s Transformers. Each of those titles had box-office grosses 50% to almost 200% more than Twilight.
