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The animated blockbuster The Croods, from DreamWorks, was the top-selling disc of the week ending Oct. 6.
The comic tale of a Stone Age family, distributed by 20th Century Fox, debuted at No. 1 on Nielsen VideoScan’s First Alert sales chart, which tracks overall disc sales, DVD and Blu-ray Disc combined.
The Croods, the second-highest-grossing original DreamWorks Animation film ever, opened theatrically in March and went on to earn $187.2 million in U.S. theaters — and a whopping $585 million worldwide. It was hailed by critics as the most original and funniest animated film of the year and is said to be a front-runner for the Best Animated Oscar. A sequel and TV series are already in development.
STORY: ‘The Croods’ First Animated Oscar Screener to Reach Voters
Meanwhile, Walt Disney Studios’ The Little Mermaid, the 1989 undersea classic making its Blu-ray Disc debut, was No. 1 on Nielsen’s dedicated Blu-ray Disc sales chart. Released as a top-of-the-line Disney Diamond Edition, the film debuted at No. 2 on First Alert, selling 65 percent as many discs as The Croods — a spectacular tally for a film that’s nearly a quarter of a century old.
But Disney animated classics traditionally sell well; back in the early days of DVD, it was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the very first Disney animated feature (from 1937), that was the first DVD to sell more than one million units in a single day.
Another theatrical classic, The Wizard of Oz, distributed by Warner, debuted at No. 5 on both First Alert and the Blu-ray Disc sales charts. Sales were fueled by the release of a 75th-anniversary edition of the 1939 film.
The Sony Pictures black comedy This Is the End, with James Franco, debuted at No. 4 on both sales charts, right behind Disney’s Iron Man 3, which slipped to No. 3 after bowing at No. 1 on both charts the prior week.
On Home Media Magazine’s rental chart for the week, This Is the End debuted at No. 1, bumping the prior week’s top rental, Paramount’s World War Z, to No. 3. Iron Man 3 held pat at No. 2.
Neither The Croods nor The Little Mermaid is available at key rental outlets Netflix and Redbox, due to 20th Century Fox’s and Disney’s 28-day holdback.
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