DVD Sales

vatar wasn’t just a huge success at the box office; the film is quickly setting records on home video as well. Since its release on April 22, Avatar has managed to move more than 6.7 million DVD and Blu-ray discs in North America alone. This shatters the previous record held by The Dark Knight.

While DVD sales have been extremely strong, the sales for the Blu (Blu)-ray version of the film have been pretty astonishing. Avatar easily beat the first-day record of 600,000 Blu-ray discs set by The Dark Knight in 2008, selling 1.2 million copies on Blu-ray Thursday. Four days later, the film managed to grow that number to 2.7 million. That’s more than the 2.5 million copies The Dark Knight has managed to sell on Blu-ray over the last 18 months.

In all fairness, Blu-ray market penetration is much greater now than it was 18 months ago. Still, the fact that nearly a third of all sales so far are for the Blu-ray version speaks to the power of Avatar. 20th Century Fox even told reporters that sales of Blu-ray players at Best Buy have doubled since Avatar’s release.

While Avatar is also available for digital download via Sony’s PlayStation Network, Apple’s iTunes, VUDU and others, the uncompressed, “true HD” experience of the film on Blu-ray is a huge driver for the platform.

The U.S. isn’t the only country where Avatar sales have soared; France, Germany and Spain have also experienced tremendous sales. The film comes to the U.K. today, where it should continue to do well.

Fox fully plans on milking Avatar for all it is worth. Thursday’s release contained no extra features or behind-the-scenes goodies; it’s just the film. An expanded special edition will be released in October. Additionally, despite Avatar’s immersive 3D experience in theaters, home viewers won’t be able to re-create Pandora (Pandora) in 3D until sometime in 2011.

What do you think of the continued success of Avatar? Do you think the film has the potential to drive Blu-ray adoption, just as The Matrix pushed DVD adoption more than a decade ago? Let us know!