Blu-ray is booming, thanks to a slew of new titles.
According to the new IHS report titled, "Star Wars Shines in its BD Debut," the Blu-ray release of the Star Wars saga and the superhero powerhouse Thor boosted Blu-ray sales in the U.S. a whopping 156 percent year over year, for the week ending September 18, 2011.
Those numbers seemed to be the cherry on top of an optimistic few weeks for the format. The upswing started with the August 2 release of Fox's animated hit Rio. A month later, Rio was still selling strong. However, the releases of Madea's Big Happy Family and Sons of Anarchy: Season 3 helped kick Blu-ray sales up a full 60 percent. By the week of September 11, sales of the high-def format were up 131 percent, thanks to the release of X-Men: First Class.
To break it down a bit, the X-Men prequel received a special Friday release on September 9. In those first three days, the title went on to sell approximately 350,000 units. By the end of the first week, that number reached a total of 600,000. Our own Chris Chiarella seemed to really enjoy this one, calling it "a truly grand, rousing reboot of the franchise." Read his full X-Men: First Class Blu-ray Review for more information.
Thor was released the following Tuesday, in both a 2D and 3D Blu-ray format. The two options sold a combined 500,000 discs in the first week of availability, with 14 percent of those sales coming from Blu-ray 3D alone. Our own Chris Chiarella bestowed Big Picture Big Sound's BIGGIE award on this release. "Thor is one of those near-perfect Blu-rays that masterfully presents a terrific movie with some of the best audio and video of the year," he said. "It absolutely rocked my world." Read more in his Thor Blu-ray 3D Review.
A few days later, Star Wars made its highly anticipated Blu-ray debut, on Friday, September 16. The title sold 400,000 units in the first three days. About 92 percent of those sales were for the $139.99 six-movie, nine-disc set, with the original and prequel trilogies making up the rest. Chris Chiarella got his hands on the full saga box set. Read his Star Wars: The Complete Saga Blu-ray Review if you want to see all of the discs completely dissected.
According to IHS, this is the type of growth that studios and retailers have been looking for, since the Blu-ray format made its debut back in 2006. Apparently, though, it takes some big titles to make those types of advances happen.
"Studios are starting to bring the crown jewels out of the vault for BD release," said Jan Saxton, senior U.S. video analyst for IHS. "That, coupled with the first releases from a very strong summer box office, has the potential to turn the movie disc market around. Weak DVD sales have continually dragged the market down in 2011, but with the strong showing of X-Men: First Class, Thor and Star Wars, the overall market may have hit an inflection point."
IHS says that "Star Wars Shines in its BD Debut" was compiled by analyzing Nielsen's VideoScan data for the U.S.
