Epic at #1

Not in movie palaces here or around the world, but in purchases of little silver disks.

Blu-ray Sales, August 19-25: Epic Overtakes Olympus for Number One

For the week that ended on August 25th, Twentieth Century Fox's Epic topped both the Blu-ray-only and overall package media charts. ... Epic managed a surprisingly robust theatrical run despite mediocre critical notices (the film's Metacritic total is 52%); the CGI adventure grossed over $253 million worldwide on top of a projected $100 million budget. Factoring into its sales was a Blu-ray market share of 40%. ...

A quarter billion in movie ticket sales would be considered robust by many standards, but not for animated theatrical features. News Corp. has been operating its own mint wit the Ice Age franchise, earning $700 million and 800 million a pop. Not so for Rio (although the movie did relatively well) or the latest epic based on a William Joyce property.

It would be worth knowing if, on a subliminal level, there is audience resistance to snails and garden slugs as characters in animated features. That theory might explain the tepid box office for both Turbo and Epic.

The sad part: Movie creators can never know with certainty why their movies didn't do boffo business at the turnstiles. That's why I offer up the theory of why this feature did less than stellar business: audiences didn't want to see mollusks on the big-screen. And especially not in 3-D.