dwk wrote: Sat Feb 13, 2021 6:27 pmI think that BU said that the UHD of
Maniac was selling faster than the limited edition Blu-ray that they had released the year before, but I don't recall them saying it outsold all the previous Blu-rays.
I might have misunderstood BU then.
Ribs wrote: Sat Feb 13, 2021 6:54 pmIf Mad Max sold 12k after two months there is no reason to assume its sales will particularly slow and it won’t be at 15 by six months, and maybe 20 at a year (that seems high but I wouldn’t put it out of the question).
Actually, having followed Arrow LEs sales over time for as long as possible, it's clear that just like theatrical runs, there is a huge early peak followed by a longer but much slower trail. For Arrow for instance, their LEs sales are clearly peaking just after the pre-orders are open and then straight away declining after that. This goes for lower-regular batch sizes (2000-3000 copies) just like for bigger batch sizes (4000-10k copies), so it seems to be purely proportionnal overall (well, providing the batch size of the LE wasn't vastly under-/over-estimated).
For instance, it took 1.5 months of open pre-orders for Arrow to sell 70% of the American Werewolf LE run, but it took 2 additionnal months to sell only 10 additionnal % of it. It finally took 5 months to sell out. If we suppose a 5000 copies batch, this means going from 2300 sales/month to 250.
RoboCop LE, same thing : 50% sold out after 1 month, 70% after 3, 85% after 6, 90% after 12. It took in total 15 months to sell out. Again supposing 5000 copies : 2500 sales the 1st month, then 250/month over the next 5 months, then 50/month until selling out.
I sadly haven't kept my older file but IIRC, the Phantasm set sold very quickly (let's say 3 months) about 5000 copies. It took 4 times this time to sell out the other 5000 (14 months to sell out), so it went from an initial 1600 sales a month to 450.
Interested people clearly aren't waiting to buy those, just like they're not to see a movie in theater, and then the remaining trail clearly is much much slower.
Note however that technically, by assuming 12k after 2 months then 15k by 6 months, you're technically assuming a slow down (and not a small one at that).
Ribs wrote: Sat Feb 13, 2021 6:54 pmI find serious fault that several people seem insistent that the releases that have been succesful on 4K have only done so because of some weird circumstance and it doesn’t actually reflect the market; “how did Oldboy sell?” when all the Arrow LE UHDs (the only thing we are actually able with any authority judge how quickly they’ve sold) sold out near immediately
As you wrote, Arrow is usually doing LEs runs around 3-5000 copies. Selling 10-15k is selling 3 times their usual batches, this in a much smaller market to people that possibly are re-re-upgrading a movie they already bought (so it comes with a negative psychological threshold for some).
I'm not saying a minute these are selling well because of "some weird circumstance", but that these very titles might not be representative of the UHD market, and even of the UHD indie market, for very good reasons but still. Flash Gordon for instance comes with a very specific fanbase in the US and the UK, certainly not the Star Wars or Star Trek one, but still. We don't have this in France and guess what : the UHD steelbook still is easily available (and probably hasn't been pressed at more than 5000 copies, probably just 3000 copies). Moreover, for Arrow, these are LEs, which is boosting their sales by a FOMO effect. Finally, I doubt an indie label would try to jumpstart their market with titles that aren't going to do massively well in sales. It's no wonder IMO that BU, for instance, started with Maniac and Zombi 2, probably their 2 best-sellers. And for Second Sight, Dawn of the Dead selling high is everything but a surprise. I'd do the same if I was them.
So I'm not asking "how Oldboy is selling" for mockery or party-pooping or dishonesty, but because such a release is taking all these extra factors out of the equation : the LE boost, the active fanbase, etc, and what you get is the more simple interest in the format and the upgrade it provides. Because as you wrote, selling 12-15k UHDs is extremely high. Within the labels themselves, it'd probably be record-sales even within BDs. So yeah, I do think these are outstanding figures (ie in a statistical meaning), for very concrete and real reasons, but outstanding nevertheless.
And even if those LEs (Flash, Tremors) are gone, I believe these were 5000-copies batches. Demons 1+2 is 4000 IIRC. Not 10-15k. And we said, that's only some of their LEs (and some of the LEs available), several other titles aren't even selling that.
FrauBlucher wrote: Sat Feb 13, 2021 8:30 pmBut aren't these apples and oranges you folks are talking about. These horror/sci fi genre titles sell much better in the higher formats compared to the Old Classic Hollywood films, which I guess is what the KL Insider was making his point about
Not only that but only the activity of the fanbase behind this genre currently, and even behind some of these specific movies currently. In France, Studio Canal have released quite a number of UHDs but only Evil Dead II and Total Recall sold out within a few weeks (and those are steelbooks so it probably helped thanks to the Steelbook crowd).
That's all I'm saying : I think we need to be cautious about niche labels being successful and what it means in terms of how big the total market actually is.
Of course, I might be wrong, but as a whole, for a market that has quite expanded in terms of number of releases (500 releases just in France), I'd need quite a hefty number of examples to find them representative.
This being written, this looks like a very interesting study to do, and I'll try to ask around to those concerned if they can give me some numbers to work with. I have some from France, and they definitely aren't anything to cheer about (outside studios and stuff like Avengers Endgame selling 31k UHDs in a month, we're talking about Studio Canal being happy with selling 1500 copies of the Rambo trilogy)).
It's also not a way for me to say "the market isn't viable". I'm seeing indies making it viable with 1000 copies. 1000. So there are ways to do money with it even by selling so few UHDs. But I just want to remember that making money with it doesn't equate selling dozens of thousands UHDs, because I see many enthusiasts seemingly thinking that's what it means, that some labels being successful means UHDs are flying off the shelves. I don't think they are. At all.
(NB : I'm trying not to come off as confrontational but am quite sure this post might look like this. This isn't my objective, and I hope it's clear I'm simply questioning how successful truly is the UHD market as a whole based on concrete figures, and whether niche labels happily operating within their niches means the sales figures are on average really massifying for them.)