It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Jim Cameron’s mega-grossing box office flick, ‘Avatar’ is destined to sell a considerable number of DVD and Blu-Rays. With a release date coinciding with last week’s ‘Earth Day,’ sales numbers did not disappoint, handily topping the previous sales champ, ‘Dark Knight.’
As of Sunday afternoon, 6.7 million copies were gobbled up by consumers in just four days in North America alone, according to retailers and sources close to the studio. Even on day one of the release, ‘Avatar’ left ‘Dark Knight’ in the dust with 3.2 million DVDs and Blu-rays, compared to 2.7 million discs for ‘Knight.’
Fox decided to release a so-called “no-frills” disc, a strategy that probably helped boost sales considering big retailers like Target and Wal-Mart were able to price the movie at $16 for DVD and $20 for the Blu-Ray combo pack. This more palatable price-point will be followed by a feature-loaded, but pricier version in November. Certainly, one can imagine a 3-D version cannot be far behind.
Outside North America, Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ managed to score some impressive sales figures as well. Variety reports that in France, sales totaled 557,000 discs in two days, blowing by previous record-holders ‘The Chorus’ and ‘Welcome to the Sticks.’ In Germany, 450,000 discs were sold on day one, crushing the fifth ‘Harry Potter’ film, ‘Order of the Phoenix,’ the country’s prior DVD sales champ.
And perhaps as a sign of the times for the country, 3,409 copies of the discs were stolen in Mexico at gunpoint from a delivery truck owned by Technicolor Home Entertainment Services of Mexico. Evidently, someone wants to return to Pandora in a very bad way.
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