Spidey 3 top Blu-ray seller for Sony

By Susanne Ault -- Video Business, 11/7/2007

Sales span U.S. and Canada, and include a relatively small amount of titles sold into the rental channel, added the studio.

It shipped about 400,000 Spider-Man 3 Blu-ray units to retail for the title’s Oct. 30 bow, said Sony, making first-week sell-off about 30%. Sony said that does not include units bundled with the new $399 PlayStation 3.

That street week sell-off bested the comparable kick-off frame for Casino Royale on Blu-ray by more than three times. Casino Royale, which sold 40,000 Blu-ray copies in week-one sales, had been Sony’s No. 1 performer in the format to this point.

The top-opening Blu-ray title across studios is believed to be Warner Home Video’s 300, which the studio reportedly sold 250,000 units on the HD DVD and BD formats combined. It’s believed about two-third, or 165,000, of 300 units were Blu-ray.

On the HD DVD side, Paramount Home Entertainment touted selling 190,000 HD DVD units of Transformers in the week after its Oct. 16 bow. Many industry sources wound up disputing that figure, however, believing it was actually tens of thousands lower.

Sony executives said Spider-Man 3 Blu-ray is doing a bang-up job at retail.

“We are well-placed for the holidays,” said Sony’s worldwide president, David Bishop. “We got in before the key shopping season, and now you’ll have more people getting into the market, as new players are launching from Sony, Sharp, Panasonic [among others]. It’s our hope that they walk out with a player and Spider-Man 3.”

Bishop said the title sold millions of standard-definition copies during street week but declined further comment. Industry sources, however, estimated the standard-DVD version sold 4 million to 5 million copies overall in its first week.

A number of retailers did note that Transformers sold at a brisker pace than Spider-Man 3 when comparing their first few days of sales across all formats. Paramount reported 8.3 million first-week units sold for Transformers.

Despite Spider-Man 3’soutstanding $337 million U.S. box-office gross, Bishop said the studio was somewhat tempering its home entertainment expectations.

“We have a lot of historical data that says that when you get to third in a series, that correlation between box office and DVD is not going to be the same,” he said. “We took that into consideration with our shipment numbers [in standard-def]. And the sell-off is as expected. It’s a very solid performer.”

In contrast, Sony more liberally shipped Blu-ray units of Spider-Man 3 versus anticipated first week sell-off.

“We are in the phase of filling the [high-def] pipeline and have to anticipate demand,” said Bishop. “We are getting in front of the demand of the players. On standard-definition, the demand is more set.”