9 mil. Blu discs sold to date; 3 million already this year

[darrylr]

Source: Hollywood in Hidef

Blu-ray Disc sales continue to pick up steam, with total U.S. sales since inception (about a year-and-a-half-ago) hitting 9 million units through March 16, according to HMR research.

In just 11 weeks this year, BD unit sales have hit 3 million units, seemingly putting the format on pace to easily hit at least 15 million units for 2008.

After averaging weekly sales ranging from 200,000 - 300,000 the past two months or so, sales spiked up to 319,000 units, driven by Miramax's release of "No Country For Old Men."

The Oscar-winner, despite having few special features of any kind, sold a whopping 68,000 units the week ending March 16. That's double the next closest title, Fox's "Hitman: Special Edition," which was also a relatively strong seller.

Prior weekly top-sellers this year were ranging from 10,000 - 30,000 units.
Look for even stronger numbers in the coming weeks with much bigger box-office titles slated for release.

Blu-ray sales in the full first quarter of 2007 were about 830,000.

68,000 in week 1 isn't what I would call "whopping" but pretty decent for a non-blockbuster type movie.

[james99]

At least we know have some numbers for No Country for Old Men. 68,000 units isn't great IMHO.

It was up against weak titles and it won a few Oscars.

[JonO]

Yeah - but the BD sales were also between 10-15% of all sales for this title, no? So overall, it's a disappointing title for sales...

I think the number will be higher than 15 mill. I think there are a lot of BD owners like myself who are chomping at the bit for Bourne Trilogy, Transformers, Batman Begins, etc (assuming we see the first two this year) and that does not even factor the potential summer Blockbusters... Should be interesting...

[polaris]

'fun' titles sell much better from what I have noticed. Comparing to total sales, 10% is much better than the sub 1-2% we saw last year.

[lapopal]

Like I said in the other thread, No country was a sales dud.