As expected Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was the top selling DVD for the week ending October 19th, but the Indy DVD remains far behind Marvel Studio’s Iron Man, which remained the number 2 title on the DVD sales charts for the second week after topping the charts in its debut week when it sold a 2008-best weekly total of 7.2 million units.

According to Home Media Retailing, which gets its information from A.C. Nielsen, the 4th Indy film sold “significantly fewer copies” during its first week than Iron Man did.  Iron Man and Indy were locked in a close battle for box office supremacy all summer until The Dark Knight came along and blew them both away.  Iron Man did earn a narrow edge at the domestic box office, while Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sold more tickets worldwide, but things could be different on DVD where Iron Man is building up an impressive edge with a total that even The Dark Knight may not be able to overcome right away.

 

Iron Man has sold 16% of its total DVDs in the new Blu-ray format, which is considerably better than industry average of 10%.  It should be interesting to see what the Blu-ray percentages for both Iron Man and Indy 4 are by the end of the holiday season.  Certainly both films look superb in Blu-ray.  The scope and exotic settings of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are full evident in the richly detailed images, and the high speed action scenes are rendered without any of the blurring that often mars the backgrounds in traditional DVDs.

 

The Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Blu-ray is a 2-disc special edition with hours and hours of extra features, everything that is included on the 2-disc regular DVD Special Edition and more.  Blockbusters such as Iron Man and Indy 4 are naturals for Blu-ray and the superb Blu-ray transfers are going to look better and better to more people as high definition TV spreads in terms of both hardware and programming.

 

As was the case with VHS tapes, which held out in the children’s category long after DVD dominated more adult genres, Blu-ray has been slower to make inroads with films aimed at younger audiences.  Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, which topped Iron Man in DVD sales last week and quickly became the bestselling backlist DVD release of 2008, has sold just 9.3% of its units on Blu-ray. 

Sleeping Beauty is the first of Disney’s Platinum Editions and it features a superb digital restoration of the film, which looks great in the regular DVD edition and should really shine in the Blu-ray format.  The Platinum Edition includes a never-before-seen alternate opening, deleted songs, and an informative new “Making of Sleeping Beauty” documentary, but the real reasons to acquire this Platinum Edition are its superb visuals and enhanced soundtrack.