Batman v Superman Tops Home Video Sales

Batman v Superman tops home video sales in a rather easy week

I’ve said it before, calling Batman v Superman an outright flop is a gross exaggeration. You can’t really say that about any movie that grossed over $870 million dollars worldwide. But it still was expected to do much better, and certainly not be so massively divisive as it was.

But you can tell that Warner Bros. was hitting panic mode with all the critical drubbings and the box office that started off incredibly strong but also dropped off a massive cliff when almost immediately they started advertising that the home video release of Batman v Superman would contain a director’s cut (only on Blu-Ray though) which had a 30 extra minutes that had somehow made this PG-13 movie R (and explained all the giant plot holes you could drive a fleet of trucks through).

It should be noted that tons of films have director’s cuts, but none of those get rated by the MPAA because they don’t need to be, so it was merely a marketing ploy for the home video crowd. Did this ploy pay off when Batman v Superman came to home video?

Well, I’d say the answer is sort of. For it’s first week on Blu-Ray & DVD, Batman v Superman did top the charts, but it’s not like there was a whole lot going up against it. Second place was Allegiant, which only sold 12% of what Batman v Superman did,  and was enough of flop that the follow-up is reportedly being made into a TV movie. And there were no new releases that would be serious challenges to really any high-budgeted blockbuster movies.

Next: Batman v Superman: Ultimate Edition

Actually next week, it’s very likely that Batman v Superman will get knocked off by another Batman movie, The Killing Joke, which performed super well in it’s limited theatrical run and is a highly anticipated straight to video release.

h/t Variety