Paramount’s Iron Man DVD, which was released on September 30th, topped all the DVD sales and rental charts for the week ending October 5th with sales totaling 7.2 million units, which gives old Shellhead the top-selling DVD of the year so far (I Am Legend, the previously leader, has sold 5.8 million). Iron Man pushed DVD sales to a weekly high for 2008 in the midst of a full blown financial crisis, providing further evidence that the entertainment industry is countercyclical. But much of the credit for this demonstration of DVD success in hard times has to go the Jon Favreau-helmed movie, the #2 film of the year at the domestic box office where it racked up $318.1 million. The Iron Man DVD sold seven times the number of units as the #2 movie on the DVD charts, fellow newcomer Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Iron Man has gotten the Q4 DVD market off with an emphatic bang, somthing the studios were fervently hoping for, and it also appears to be validating
Part of the reason that the Iron Man Blu-ray has done so well is that the film appeals to comic book, special effects movie and video game fans, the very folks who are likely to own a PlayStation 3 or be early adopters of the new video format. Certainly the Iron Man Blu-ray looks spectacular on screen. The high def format captures every detail of the fast-paced action of the film, which is filled with great stunt, wire, and explosives work as well as computer-aided special effects.
Iron Man is not only the bestselling Blu-ray release of 2008 so far, it is the best looking with a really superb transfer and great audio. But more importantly, all this technology is in support of a really solid film built around a core of strong acting starting with the performance of Robert Downey Jr., who goes from the wicked smart, but callow playboy of the opening sequences to the determined and focused hero of the film’s last half. Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard, and Gwyneth Paltrow provide all-star support—comic book movie casting has come a long, long way from David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury in the forgettable 1998 Fox TV movie.
The Blu-ray edition provides the same extensive and excellent extra features that are included in 2-Disc Special Collector’s Edition, and it appear that the Blu-ray sales are largely coming at the expense of the conventional collector’s version, which ranked behind both the Blu-ray and the Single-Disc version on both Amazon and Deep Discount--hardcore fans who want the Collector's Edition extras are also likely to be early adopters. Anyone who enjoyed the film will definitely want to watch “I Am Iron Man,” an in-depth documentary that covers the making of the movie, and comics fans will enjoy the “Invincible Iron Man” featurette with interviews from many of the members of the Marvel bullpen who contributed their ideas to the making of the film. “Wired” demonstrates the blend of physical and visual effects in the movie and it yields some surprising revelations about how the film’s seamless effects were created.
The Iron Man DVD release has certainly proved to be a phenomenon, at least during its first week, but it probably won’t have any great effect on sales of Iron Man graphic novels, since the movie itself didn’t. There just isn’t an Iron Man graphic novel that ties in closely with the movie, but toys are another thing altogether. The theatrical release of the film definitely pushed sales of Iron Man toys well past expectations (Hasbro had to rush additional product to stores that had sold out), and the additional exposure that the DVD provides is likely to insure that Iron Man toys and action figures do well during the 2008 holiday season.
