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Wrestling with Transformers "record"
October 26, 2007
Prediction: Within two weeks the week, we’ll see a press release trumpeting record-breaking Blu-ray Disc sales of Sony’s Spider-Man 3.
The fourth quarter is primed for one boast after another, with a record four films that made more than $300 million at the box office—Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third and Transformers—and 15 more titles over $100 million due at stores in the coming weeks.
The studios are all hoping against hope that the combined firepower of these titles will pull DVD sales, which were running more than 4% down at the third-quarter mark, at least even with last year.
The studios each need their own blockbuster theatricals to perform like gangbusters on DVD, and, because Wall Street’s perception of the vitality of the home entertainment sector as a whole also affects their companies’ stock prices, the studios also need the industry to perform well. They are pulling for one another, at least up to a point—as far as standard DVD is concerned. And DVD will make up more than 95% of consumer sales this holiday season.
It’s over that sliver of the market that’s left—the 1% to 5% made up of high-def discs—where the real dog fights will break out. The sliver that is still so small it won’t really influence the overall market, and is so hotly contested because of the format war.
Paramount last week sent out a press release touting its sales of Transformers—a record for the year, according to the studio, with 4.5 million DVDs sold in one day and 8.3 million in one week. It also claimed record high-def sales of 100,000 Transformers HD DVDs sold on day one and 190,000 units sold in the first week.
As might be expected, other studios immediately started chewing over the numbers—and in some cases, spitting them back. There was skepticism over the 8.3 million DVDs, as there is over every number issued by a studio but not immediately confirmable by a third party. But more doubt was focused on the high-def claim.
“Impossible!” said critics, pulling out retail data that showed a much smaller number of units sold through at Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Target—three retailers that together account for well over half of high-def retail sales.
The rub for Blu-ray studios was that at 190,000 copies, the Transformers HD DVD trumped the fastest-selling Blu-ray title, Warner’s 300. (Though Warner never broke out Blu-ray sales on the titles, they are believed to be about two-thirds of the 250,000 units the studio initially sold on both formats.)
Blu-ray has by most accounts been selling twice as many units as HD DVD, making the Transformers claim a bitter pill indeed.
I don’t know how many copies Transformers really sold. But I would like to see the tie ratio to the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive.
And I can’t wait to see how many copies Spider-Man 3 sells on
Blu-ray.
Posted by Marcy Magiera on October 26, 2007 | Comments (0)