Ok, I follow most of this, but as it is after midnight, could someone simplify it for a poor, disturbed woman? So, we're approximating how many units sold by now? And I guess we're to assume the DVD is going for somewhere between 16 and 20 dollars at most locations, right? Thanks!

There are 2 weeks of data missing so unfortunately it is not possible to determine unit sales totals without a fair amount of speculation as any total will have some holes in it. But it is reasonable to assume Serenity has sold more than 2 million copies as of Jan 22nd.

Oops, my mistake. I live in Australia--I was thinking in Australian currency for that $30.

It's cool! :)

Me too! :D *waves*
I read somewhere that a studio recieves something like $10 to $13 per DVD sold.

The week after Christmas I was layed up on the couch with the WORST CASE OF FLU EVER, and was watching Charlie Rose. As his guest was Reed Hastings, CEO and Founder of Netflix - besides being a pretty interesting person- he's obviously very good at keeping on top of everything that keeps Netflix going strongly. I wish I could remember the numbers he threw out, but he said that the movie industry profits are HUGE from DVDs. His opinion was that simu-release big screen/dvd was not going to happen, but that the span between the two would become closer. Unfortunately, my memory on a lot of what he said is fuzzy now, but I had the impression that dvd sales would continue to be what movie companies would aim for. IMO, this bodes ill for the quality of movies that will be made. Why bother making GREAT movies anymore, when the dvd-consuming public will take pretty much whatever is laid in front of them?

If you're at all interested, see if you can catch a repeat (There is probably a torrent of it, for anyone so inclined). I like Charlie Rose generally, although sometimes his guests are hit or miss - this one was a definite hit with me. I might have found it interesting to begin with, but with the recent release of Serenity at the time, it was a little more so.

As the price drops - maybe more will be sold. I know lots of people who wait to purchse at the first discount price.

:)

That's possible. I always thought it was less though, since DVDs tend to drop in price, and there are other groups needing to get paid besides just the studio...once the price drops, Universal getting 10-13 a DVD would be nearly the whole price. But I honestly don't know one way or the other. The more money Universal gets from each DVD sale, the better.

Some of you may be confusing wholesale and retail. Once retailers have purchased DVDs from Universal, Uni had already been paid. Probably in the $10 per unit range.

The only reason it matters what the retailers sell is in how it relates to re-orders.

The DVDs still cost a few bucks each to make, and ship and overhead and stuff. So Uni probably nets about $7 per unit.

The retail sales dollars are not important. The wholesale sales numbers are what counts and nobody is ever going to see those. The unit sales is the only way possible to extrapolate the possible net profit to Universal.

Sorry to be the finance geek amongst you all.

I had a notion that this was how it actually worked but couldn't get confimation, so thanks. However, by working out the numbers of dvd's sold at retail level, we know that at least this many must have been bought at wholesale by the retailers in order to sell them. Hence, we are still getting some idea of the profit Universal is making and if anything this is better news since, the number of dvd's sold at retail must be the minimum number of units sold at wholesale.

Ok, the chart is updated once again for the week ending Jan. 29th
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/chart..._video/dvds.jsp
Flightplan (shakes fist :wink: ) is #1 by far. Using data from last week (Lord of War sold 2.5 million copies) we can approximate sales for Flightplan this week.

Flightplan is #3 in year to date sales and Lord of War is currently #4 YTD. This means Lord of War unit sales from week ending 22 + Lord of War unit sales from week ending 29 is less than Flightplan sales for this week, the week ending Jan. 29. Sales index for Lord of War for the week ending Jan. 29th is 18.6%.

LoW = Lord of War, FP = Flightplan
(LoW end 22)+(LoW end 29) < (FP end 29)
2,500,000 + .186X ..............< X
................(-.186X)...............(-.186X)
2,500,000 < .814X
(/.814).......(/.814)
3,071,253 < X
Flightplan end 1/29 is greater than 3,071,253 units
So MIN unit sales for Flightplan = 3,071,253.

Using this data we can extrapolate sales of "The Man" for this week, the week ending Jan. 29th.
The Man, week 2, YTD #24, index .058

3,071,253 * .058 = 178,132 The Man units in 2nd week.
Following the pattern, Serenity is likely #21 or 22 YTD down from an estimated #18 or #19 last week and The Man is currently #24 YTD. This means total sales of The Man up to Jan. 29th is likely very close to total Serenity sales since Jan. 1st.

(The Man end 22) 647,500 + (The Man end 29) 178,132 = 825,632

So Serenity sales for 2006 are likely around 825,632 units.

Total min: 2,185,908

1st week min: 1,105,840
2nd week min: 254,436 (at least the number from 1/15)
2006: 825,632


A educated guess would be 2,733,646

1st weel average (min-max): 1,355,094
2nd week 50% drop from 1st week min: 552,920
2006: 825,632


With 10$ profit for Universal per unit this is more than the US box office gross (in the same timeframe of 6 weeks)! And it's still selling in the US and R2 and R4 releases are coming. I speculate it will perform better on DVD than at the box office.

Analyst

^ I have no idea where all that came from, and I don't need you to explain every step, it sounds like you know what you're talking about.

If you can't trust a first post, in the sales numbers arena, by a poster named Analyst, who can you trust?

We were all banking on DVD sales, so this sounds good to me.