The two first titles in Paramount's Sapphire Series, '
Gladiator' and '
Braveheart', comfortably took the two top spots in the Blu-ray sales chart for the week ended September 6, according to Nielsen VideoScan First Alert. The number one in overall packaged-media sales, '
State of Play', only got to fourth place on BD, behind '
Earth'. The top-selling movie of last week, '
Fighting', evaporated to twelfth place.
Here is the Blu-ray top 10 (previous-week ranking in parenthesis):
- • Gladiator
- • Braveheart
- • Earth
- • State of Play
- • Heroes: Season 3
- (4) Watchmen
- • Supernatural: The Complete Fourth Season
- (8) Fast & Furious
- (r) The Dark Knight
- (r) True Blood: The Complete First Season
'Gladiator' sold about 16% more units than 'Braveheart'. Sales volume for those two titles was surprisingly close, considering that Ridley Scott's imperial blockbuster is more recent by five years, and that its domestic box office was more than twice that of Mel Gibson's Scottish epic.
Regarding market share for new releases, the highest percentage was for 'Earth', which got 26% of its sales from the Blu-ray edition. 'State of Play' and '
Heroes: Season 3' had 13% each. '
Supernatural: The Complete Fourth Season' had 7%, and the direct-to-video cheerleader movie '
Bring It On: Fight to the Finish' had a paltry 2%.
Overall, BD sales revenue was $15.76 million, up 93.21% from the same week last year. DVD sales revenue was $123.46 million, down 19.48% year-on-year.
Blu-ray accounted for 11.3% of total packaged-media sales revenue.