Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Sagging Sales

Unfortunate news for animation on the little silver disk:

Shrek Forever After, available for sale Tuesday as a standalone or as part of a set, is headed for underwhelming results, a Wall Street analyst was telling his clients on Monday. ... Greenfield's latest analysis also makes the case that Disney/Pixar is seeing "underwhelming" sales of Toy Story 3. ...

And Megamind, due early next year, also "will face substantial headwinds," Greenfield said, given his estimate that it will generate only $153 million at the domestic box office ...

The trendline for disk sales has been down for a while now. Jeffrey K. and others have noted how "family" animated features have held up better than R-rated live-action, but nothing in the age of online streaming has been shooting up.

Maybe piling on super-excellent extras atop Disk 2 of the Special Platinum Edition will temporarily stem the death spiral, but long-term, studios will have to come up with new revenue streams.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, good lord, HOW many times is Katzenberg going to blame "society" and "changing trends" for people not buying Shrek sequels on disk??

(Er, oops, wait, sorry, they were tracking DVD sales...That would explain it.
So, do you buy DVD's anymore either, now that we all get them for free with the Blu-ray anyway?)

Anonymous said...

Toy Story is at least on my list of stuff to buy, but I'm waiting to run into a pack of all three at a decent price. I almost always buy based exclusively on bonus features, which tend not to be available through streaming.
It's much more convenient to just wait for onDemand or Netflix to get something in, especially if it's not something I absolutely must own. As much as I loved Toy Story 3, it'll be out on DVD for a good long while, and I can wait for a decent sale (especially since I'm currently back-logged anyways in terms of things to watch). To be honest I think the last movie I bought on DVD that wasn't a re-release was either Up or Princess and the Frog...

Anonymous said...

I bet VHS sales for Pixar and Dreamworks are sagging too.

Anonymous said...

This guy has been beating the "Dreamworks stock is overvalued" drum for a while now.

What I don't understand is, everyone knows that home video sales have been dropping industry-wide for a long time, so why do companies keep expecting to set sales records? Shouldn't they have the common sense by now to realize that nothing is going to sell in the numbers that it used to?

"OMG it isn't selling as well as Finding Nemo!!" Gee, really?

Anonymous said...

Maybe there can be a good outcome to this trend. Maybe the decline of home video sales will make studios rethink "the movie" and make them things you want to go to the theater to see and not view them as publicity campaigns for later DVD sales.

Anonymous said...

They HAVE. Stereoscopic Movies, the new old fad
And the 3D is just as awful as it's always been.

Saw a free screening of Tron tonight. What an AWFUL movie. Even the "visuals" are crap. Awful. AWFUL.
Worst film I've seen in 10 years or more. What an embarassment for Disney.

Anonymous said...

Yah, and I heahd dose Spielbahg dinosahs were just tehbble... ;)
(Y'know, I feel old being one of the few people to still get that joke?)

"OMG it isn't selling as well as Finding Nemo!!" Gee, really?

Execs trying to judge Cars and Incredibles by Nemo numbers just don't appreciate the historical context:
'03 was one of the WORST summers in movie history since '01 (the year Shrek cleaned up), and it wasn't so much about studios being amazed that Nemo was doing well, as why everything else that season wasn't.

For a contemporary parallel, '10 was one of the worst movie summers since '03, and history does have a strange way of repeating itself about which one movie was left standing.
Think there's a pattern here.

Anonymous said...

'03 was one of the WORST summers in movie history since '01

That's the second funniest factoid I've read here today. You must be one of those funny cartoon writers, because I can't understand what the hell you're going on about, but it still makes me giggle.

Anonymous said...

"'03 was one of the WORST summers in movie history since '01"

And also either the first or second best since '01!

Site Meter