Consumers Bite a Third Time on 'Twilight'

6 Dec, 2010 By: Thomas K. Arnold

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Eclipse, the third film in the “Twilight” franchise, still has plenty of bite with consumers.

The DVD and Blu-ray Disc of the film, which grossed $300 million in U.S. theaters, went on sale at midnight Friday, Dec. 3, and after two days had already sold some 3 million DVDs and Blu-ray Discs, according to Summit Home Entertainment.

The tally falls short of what either of the first two films did on their respective disc openings, but the marketing strategy is different and the release is expected to have longer legs throughout the holiday season, said Steve Nickerson, president of Summit Home Entertainment.

"With the first two titles, we had massive March opening events involving thousands of retail stores," Nickerson said. "We were going for a big bang, right out of the gate. This time we are releasing the film during the holiday season, a much more crowded time and one with vastly different consumer shopping patterns. So our whole plan is to look at what we're doing over a four-week period of time, and not a single night."

To that end, Summit is committing three times the marketing spend to Eclipse in the post-street-date window that it committed to the two earlier titles.

The first two "Twilight" films sold an estimated 4 million discs each in their first two days in stores, Nickerson said. To date, Twilight, which was released in March 2009, has sold 10.5 million units, while New Moon, released last March, has sold 9.5 million units.

"We expect that come the beginning of the year, the performance of Eclipse will mirror that of the first two titles," Nickerson said.

 

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