Home Media Magazine reports that The Dark Knight DVD has blasted out of the gate selling more than 3 million units during its first day of release including more than 600,000 Blu-ray discs. Warner Home Video, which released the TDK DVD, is confident that The Dark Knight, which earned over $530 million at the box office (the second highest total ever), will end up as the best-selling DVD of the year.
Warner officials were especially pleased with the Blu-ray sales. Just a few weeks ago Iron Man set a record by selling over 500,000 BDs in its first week—a record that The Dark Knight hi-definition disc overwhelmed in just one day. According to Home Media, WHV officials expect The Dark Knight Blu-ray disk, which is the first Warners’ release to include state-of-the-art BD-Live features available via Internet-connected Blu-ray players, will sell over a million copies during its first week of release—a milestone event that, if it happens, will testify to both the immense popularity of the film and to the growing consumer acceptance of the Blu-ray format.
Rankings for the week prior to the release of The Dark Knight DVD have just become available from Home Media. Nielsen VideoScan, which doesn’t unfortunately include Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club, reports that Disney’s Prince Caspian won a narrow victory in overall DVD sales, though Universal’s Wanted (based on the Top Cow comic by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones) was a close second selling 90% as many copies as the Narnia sequel, which because of its “family film” nature and the popularity of the franchise, was expected to outperform Wanted on DVD by a considerable margin. However Wanted, which earned $134.3 million at the box office, showed surprising strength on DVD, topping the rental charts and the Blu-ray category, where it outsold Prince Caspian by more than 2 to 1.
Though Wanted’s performance is a nice bonus for Universal and, along with Hellboy II’s strong showing, an indication that comic book-based movies tend to do better on DVD than their theatrical grosses might indicate, it is The Dark Knight that is the key release with the potential to make or break the 2008 home entertainment season for Hollywood. Early indications are strong, but if The Dark Knight underperforms on DVD, it could, as The Wall Street Journal put it, “show that
