Early Look At The Last Jedi Blu-Ray Sales
First numbers for The Last Jedi Blu-Ray sales have been released. How do sales for the movie compare to both The Force Awakens and Rogue One? Click through for a closer look!
Website The Numbers has released its first figures for The Last Jedi Blu-Ray Sales. The figures include sales up to week 3 of its release.
The Numbers estimates sales figures based on several industry reports which a) give a percentage of weekly sales each title had and b) overall revenue in the home media market for each quarter. The numbers for The Last Jedi are somewhat tentative, but won’t be that far off. There are no DVD numbers yet, for both The Force Awakens and Rogue One they account for roughly 33% of overall physical disc sales.
Here are the Blu-Ray sales numbers for The Last Jedi, compared to both The Force Awakens and Rogue One:
Star Wars Blu-Ray sales week 3
- Blu-Ray Sales for Rogue One were 54.68% down from The Force Awakens
- Blu-Ray Sales for The Last Jedi were 52.78% down from The Force Awakens
- Blu-Ray Sales for The Last Jedi are up by 4.18% from Rogue One
The Force Awakens had sold 73.83% of its Blu-Ray discs for the full year by week 3, Rogue One 61.12% which is a very low percentage for modern blockbuster movies. Disc sales are heavily frontloaded, but Rogue One was much less frontloaded than The Force Awakens. To estimate Blu-Ray sales numbers for the full year I set the percentage for The Last Jedi at around 72.50%, more frontloaded than Rogue One, somewhat less frontloaded than The Force Awakens. In theaters, The Last Jedi was heavily frontloaded, more than any other previously released Disney Star Wars movie. Other blockbusters, such as Captain America Civil War or Beauty and the Beast have even more frontloaded disc sales, at more than 80% by week 3. So a week 3 percentage of 72.5% is still good, it could well be over 80%.
Also, when comparing Blu-Ray chart positions for both Rogue One and The Last Jedi, Rogue One was able to hold on to the number 1 spot for two weeks longer, it was also still the 2nd best selling blu-ray disc in its 7th week, The Last Jedi was the 5th best selling disc in its 7th week. And it has to face stiff competition from the newly released Black Panther. So it’s reasonable to assume that The Last Jedi Blu-Ray sales are more frontloaded than for Rogue One.
Blu-Ray Sales for the full year
So, if you look at Blu-Ray sales alone then The Last Jedi will be the worst selling disc for a Disney Star Wars movie yet. My projection is that Blu-Ray disc sales for The Last Jedi will be down by approx. 12% for the full year, compared to Rogue One.
However, you also have to account for streaming services and electronic sell-thru (buying a movie on iTunes, for example).
There are no numbers for individual titles, however, we can look at overall numbers for the entire market:
You can easily see how physical disc sales become less and less relevant whereas streaming and to a certain degree electronic sell-thru take over. The numbers for 2018 are for the first quarter only, not the full year!
Whereas in 2016 more than 1/3 of the revenue came from physical disc sales, it was merely 1/5 in 2018.
So, what can we glean from all this?
- The Last Jedi’s projected decline in physical disc sales, when compared to the previous two Disney Star Wars movies, is in part based on the overall decline of physical disc sales in the USA. The Last Jedi however, sold even less discs than would be accounted for by the overall decline in disc sales for the first quarter of 2018, but not by very much.
- When you account for rising revenue through streaming and digital sales then The Last Jedi will perform on a smilar level as Rogue One – always provided the share in overall disc sales also translates to a similar overall share in digital sales and streaming numbers. Which is just an assumption. However, I believe it’s not completely inaccurate to assume that interest in seeing a blockbuster movie at home is equally distributed across all available options. A blockbuster movie that sells only few physical discs won’t have a high number of streams and vice versa.
- Based on box office, home media revenue for The Last Jedi will underperform when compared to Rogue One. Revenue from disc sales, digital sales and streaming should be higher, since more people saw The Last Jedi in theaters. The Last Jedi sold about 14% more tickets than Rogue One. But home media revenue will roughly be the same. In other words: a smaller percentage of people who saw The Last Jedi in theaters will either buy a disc, a digital copy or stream the movie when compared to Rogue One.
- The high disc sales numbers for The Force Awakens and lower disc sales numbers for the other two movies are in part offset by digital and streaming for both Rogue One and The Last Jedi, but even then they don’t reach the home media revenue generated by The Force Awakens, which is to be expected.
So, to sum it all up: the early numbers for The Last Jedi indicate that the movie will underperform on the home media market, when compared to Rogue One. The Last Jedi will have similar numbers to Rogue One, when digital sales and streaming are accounted for, but 14% more people saw The Last Jedi in theaters.
This is based on the assumption that a higher box office usually leads to higher revenue on the home video market. Financially successful and popular movies have higher home video revenue than flops or unpopular movies. It’s beyond the scope of this article to look at this in detail but a quick look at the yearly sales charts for disc releases will tell you that this assumption is correct.
It can be argued that effects from the much discussed The Last Jedi backlash can also be seen on the home video market.
Sources: The Numbers, The Digital Entertainment Group
 |
|
|
Related Links
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-Click HERE to return to the home page-
Toy Reviews