One half (some might say the better half?) of the new “Star Wars” Blu-ray set.
(Fox Home Entertainment)
“Star Wars: The Complete Saga” — the new Blu-ray box set that contains all six of the films in the Jedi saga, as well as some Darth Vader dialogue changes that incensed hard-core fans — made $84 million worldwide in its first week of release.
Home Media Magazine reports that, according to Fox, the release sold 1 million copies worldwide, 515,000 of them in North America. That makes it the No. 1 Blu-ray catalog release in the format’s history.
The keyword there, though, is catalog. When “Avatar” first arrived on DVD and Blu-ray last year, shortly after its initial theatrical release, it sold 2.7 million Blu-rays and 4 million DVDs in North America in its first four days of release. The haul for those first four days in the United States and Canada: $130 million.
The upshot: Clearly “Star Wars” fans didn’t boycott the release to protest George Lucas’s tweaks. When an Ewok unexpectedly blinks, they may complain online. But privately, some of them still purchase.
At the same time, “Star Wars: The Complete Saga” isn’t exactly a mega-blockbuster, which may be a reflection of the declining DVD/Blu-ray market and, perhaps, a sign that the public is only willing to invest in so many copies of the Skywalker story that changed the movie landscape.
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