02 March 2010

Planet Hulk Makes a Smaller SMASH on DVD


DVD sales figures for the first week of Planet Hulk have arrived and the folks at Marvel have to be a bit disappointed. The movie sold 153,026 units totaling $2,323,822. By comparison, last years Hulk Vs. mustered 178,894 units for $3,014,221. That's a 17% drop in units and over 20% reduction in revenue. More troubling is the fact that Planet Hulk was following up on a popular release whereas Hulk Vs. came after the poorly received Next Avengers. Check out the graph of first week sales figures for all of the recent animated superhero DVDs below.

What do these numbers mean? Is the public all "Hulked out" and hopping for another hero to get the spotlight? After all Hulk has been featured in 5 of the 7 Marvel releases. Is the DVD market just getting saturated with these animated superhero movies? Even though Marvel has settled in on 1 a year, DC is churning them out at 3 (with rumors of an increase to 4) per year. Was this movie just not advertised well? I know the Planet Hulk comics were a big hit but does Hulk in space turn off more casual fans? I know I was skeptical - though pleasantly surprised. Is the economy just having a general negative effect on DVD sales? What does this predict for next year's teen Thor: Tales of Asgard? I suppose I could speculate all day long, but a good comparison will be the sales figures for the new Justice League movie in the next few weeks.

I suppose the good news is that Planet Hulk still outperformed the 2 Marvel releases previous to Hulk Vs. (Next Avengers and Doctor Strange) and even outperformed Wonder Woman. Maybe good word of mouth and continued sales will give Hulk boost enough to give World War Hulk a "greenlight."

4 comments:

  1. Good info. Thanks for the graph. It's a little odd for Marvel to churn out so much Hulk lately. Between DC and Marvel, I think Marvel does a better job promoting their DVD movies via social media. They give more teasers that build up to the release while DC gives you all the different facets of promotion in one package (like an email with links to the official site, contest, facebook and twitter) just days before the release.

    From the graph I was surprised Hulk Vs had better sales than Green Lantern: First Flight.

    If DC re-markets Justice League as "Batman & Friends," they'll sell more DVDs since anything with Batman sells.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You are probably right about "Batman and Friends." :)

    I think Marvel would do a lot better if they could make X-Men and Spider-Man DVDs as well. Too bad their rights are all tied up.

    ReplyDelete
  3. For me I just had no interest in Planet Hulk what so ever. I'm not into Gladiator flicks at all, and didn't care for this when I rented it. It's the first one I did not buy, in ages.

    Wonder Woman's first week sales were poor, but good word of mouth actually gave her a decent numbers at the end (according to thenumbers.com). I'm not hearing as much a buz on Planet Hulk (but that could just be because I lost interest in it)

    I'm curious to see what Crisis on Two Earths does. I bought mine early in the morn and the guy at the store seemed surprised at how many people had been in to get it. He said that it had been selling like hotcakes (I grabbed their 2nd to last copy). So at least in my part of town it was doing well. I'm eager to see if that was the case on the rest of the planet.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I bought mine early in the morn and the guy at the store seemed surprised at how many people had been in to get it.


    Beauty & Fashion

    ReplyDelete