The gift to Diz Co. that keeps on giving:
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment's new 70th anniversary edition of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" topped the national video sales chart its first week in stores ...
Eight years ago, when "Snow White" was first released on the then-nascent DVD format, the release set a new one-day sales record for DVD of 1 million units ...
Snow White was released in December, 1937, became an immediate hit, and made Disney a major force in Hollywood. It also grossed $8 million. While this seems paltry today, it made Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the highest grossing feature in Hollywood's (then) twenty-five year history*.
SW has been making big money ever since. Its theatrical gross, after re-releases that extended from the 1940s to the 1990s, totals $184,925,486.
And that, of course, is only part of the cash flow. There have been millions from merchandising and hit records, millions more from video releases. SW, rolled out on VHS in 1994, sold fifty million video cassettes worldwide. It sold millions of DVDs in 2001, and now hits the top of the charts yet again with its Blu-ray release.
There's only one other film from the 1930s that has had similar success to Snow White, and that's the big-budget Civil War epic titled Gone With the Wind. Outside of the Clark Gable picture, no other live-action film comes close.
Not bad for an 86-minute film that has no flesh-and-blood actors in it.
* Not counting Birth of a Nation, which probably made more, but for which there is no definitive accounting.
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6 comments:
Of course, there's no money in animation. Especially that hand drawn crap.
Mr. Norman, you rock.
I have to add a caveat to the DVD sales: I bought the DVD last week, only to discover that it was Blu-Ray. My local Blockbuster was nice enough to give me the option of exchanging it for the standard DVD coming out in November. I wonder how many people were similarly confused?
"Snow White was released in December, 1937, became an immediate hit, and made Disney a major force in Hollywood. It also grossed $8 million. While this seems paltry today..."
Adjusted for inflation, $8,000,000 in 1938 dollars is equal to $119,542,816 in today's dollars.
And as Steve points out the picture has continued to rake in the dough over the years with multiple theatrial re-releases , VHS rentals and sales, DVD rentals and sales, and the new DVD and BLU-RAY release rolling out in stores now.)
It's also quite helpful to the corporate bottom line that the U.S. congress have cooperatively extended copyright protection.
And thank god they did. I hate to think what some jealous, hateful anti-Disney twats would do to Mickey Mouse if HE ever entered the public domain...
Snow White is the first DVD that I owned.
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