Sales of the DVD and VHS versions of Fox's X2: X-Men United film totaled an estimated $107 million in the first five days on sale.  Video Business reports six million units sold; the revenue of the home video release of X2 is already close to half the theatrical gross of $215 million.

 

Worldwide box-office revenues for X-Men and X2 are around $700 million.  Taking into account the home video release of X-Men and the X-Men 1.5 DVD (a combined $180 million) and X2, the total gross for the X-Men franchise will easily exceed $1 billion.

 

Projections are for U.S. video sales of X2 to surpass 10 million copies, as well as another $170 million in home video sales overseas, bringing the total X-Men movie revenue to almost $1.4 billion.

 

For the sake of comparison, Spider-Man broke the record for unit and dollar sales for home video release near the end of last year (see 'Spider-Man Video Breaks Record'), selling over eight million DVDs (which was 75% of the total sales).  The Hulk sold 3.5 million DVDs in the first week after release (see 'Marvel's Movie Outlook').  These figures put X2 DVD sales at about 75% of the Spider-Man first week total, and about twice the Hulk's.

 

This consumer support of The X-Men movie can only be a positive for related licensed products sales, as well as giving the various X-Men comic titles from Marvel a higher profile to the public.