War drama '
Defiance' was the top-selling title on Blu-ray in the US for the week ended June 7, closely followed by '
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children', according to Nielsen VideoScan First Alert. The top overall disc seller, romantic comedy '
He's Just Not That Into You', only managed fifth place for BD.
Here is the Blu-ray top 10 (previous-week ranking in parenthesis):
- (N) Defiance
- (N) Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
- (N) Weeds: Season Four
- (1) Taken
- (N) He's Just Not That Into You
- (2) Valkyrie
- (N) Revolutionary Road
- (4) Quantum of Solace
- (3) Paul Blart: Mall Cop
- (5) Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
'Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children' (which was first released on DVD in 2006) had surprisingly high sales on BD: it moved 87% as many copies as 'Defiance'. According to Home Media Magazine's research director, Kelly Burner, that's significant "because Final Fantasy appeals to a niche anime/video game fan demographic and has been out on DVD for more than a year." Of every 100 FFVII copies sold last week, 97 were Blu-ray. In fact, as Home Media Magazine's editor T.K. Arnold adds on his
blog, BD sales for this title "were so strong that they propelled the title back into the overall top 20 sellers list".
Another surprise was the performance by '
Weeds: Season 4'. It made third place in the Blu-ray charts, selling 57% as much as 'Defiance'. Besides, 17% of the overall sales of this TV show were on BD, which is higher than the percentage from other recent day-and-date TV seasons, such as '
24: Season 7' or '
True Blood: The Complete First Season'. That is even more remarkable if we consider that 'Weeds' is a comedy. Obviously, Lionsgate's strategy of releasing BD editions from season 1 has paid off.
As regards market share, we just mentioned that 'Weeds: Season 4' did 17%. So did 'Defiance'. The drama '
Revolutionary Road' did a respectable 10%, while 'He's Just Not That Into You' only managed 5%.
Update
Home Media Magazine has now published the pie chart comparing aggregate unit sales of the top 20 BDs versus the top 20 DVDs. The split for this week is 12% BD: 88% DVD, the same as the previous week.
Total revenue from BD sales was $16.03 million, up 107.75% from the same week last year. DVD revenue was $159.10 million, down 6.83% year-on-year.
BD accounted for 9.2% of total packaged-media sales revenue.