After breaking the first-day sales record for Blu-ray last week, Fox’s “Avatar” has become 2010’s top overall disc seller, moving 6.7 million combined DVD and Blu-ray copies since Thursday.
That total exceeds the combined 6.5 million-unit total for Summit Entertainment’s “Twilight Saga: New Moon,” which has been out on disc since March 20. (These are just sales figures and do not include rental transactions, or video on demand.)
The bare-bones 2D version of James Cameron’s global box-office record holder — which has exceeded $2.7 billion globally — will be followed up by a special-edition release in the fourth quarter, as well as a 3D Blu-ray version early next year.
“Avatar’s” first-day Blu-ray sales performance of 1.5 million units has been quite impressive, especially considering that the previous one-day record, set by Warner Bros.’ “The Dark Knight,” was only 600,000.
But for the moribund home entertainment business, even the big hits don’t hit like they used to.
“Avatar’s” 6.7 million-disc four-day sales pace pales in comparison to sales tracking of yester-year titles like “Finding Nemo,” which sold a combined 8 million DVD and VHS copies on its first day alone.
