While we have to wait until Monday to get our hands on Avatar over here in the UK, the US got it yesterday, on Earth Day, and it’s already been announced that it’s set the record for the biggest single-day sales for the Blu-ray format ever.
To a certain extent it would have been more of a surprise if it hadn’t, as with the film grossing $2.7 billion at cinemas and being a true visual spectacle, it is the sort of movie that would seem to be made for HD. THR reports that it smashed the previous record, held by The Dark Knight, by selling 1.4 million copies on Blu-ray yesterday. While it didn’t set an overall sales record across all formats, it is believed it shifted more than four million copies, which is a massive figure by anyone’s count, and should see Avatar passing the year’s current top US seller (New Moon with 6.5 million units sold) very soon.
However this is just the beginning, as with an extended cut coming to cinemas in the summer, and plans for a blow-out features-packed DVD and Blu-ray release (and possibly 3D Blu-ray) this Christmas, there’ll be plenty more chanced for Avatar to make cash from fans this year. The current release is pretty much extras-free, but that doesn’t appear to have put people in the US off from heading back to the world of Pandora.