Unstoppable 'American Sniper' Tops Home Video Chart for the Second Time This Year
Five weeks after it came out, Warner’s American Sniper regained the top spot on both national home video sales charts for the week ending June 21, bumping the surprise theatrical hit Kingsman: The Secret Service, from 20th Century Fox, to No. 2.
Two new releases debuted in the top five on the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert chart, which tracks overall disc sales, Blu-ray Disc and DVD combined, as well as Nielsen’s dedicated Blu-ray chart.
Sony Pictures’ Chappie, a sci-fi thriller about a renegade police droid who is reprogrammed to think and feel for himself, bowed at No. 3 on both charts. The film opened theatrically on March 6 and went on to gross $31.6 million, against a budget estimated at $49 million.
Bowing at No. 4 on the overall disc sales chart and No. 5 on the Blu-ray chart was Warner’s Run All Night, a mobster film starring Liam Neeson and Ed Harris that also underperformed in theaters, with a domestic gross of $26.4 million against an estimated budget of $50 million.
A third new release, 20th Century Fox’s The Lazarus Effect, debuted at No. 9 on the overall disc sales chart and No. 14 on the Blu-ray sales chart. The horror film, about a group of medical students who discover a way to bring dead patients back to life, stars Olivia Wilde and grossed $25.8 million on the bigscreen.
Chappie generated 49% of its total unit sales from Blu-ray, compared to just 31% for Run All Night and 31% for The Lazarus Effect. American Sniper and Kingsman each generated 57% of their latest weekly unit sales total from Blu-ray.
On Home Media magazine’s video rental chart for the week, American Sniper shot to No. 1 now that its 28-day holdback from Netflix is done. Chappie bowed at No. 2, bumping Universal Pictures’ Fifty Shades of Grey to No. 3 (from No. 2 the prior week) and The Duff to No. 4 (from No. 3).
Rounding out the top five on Home Media magazine’s disc rental chart was Paramount’s “Project Almanac,” which had debuted at No. 1 the previous week.
Thomas K. Arnold is editorial director of Home Media magazine: http://www.homemediamagazine.com.
