The 10 best-selling DVDs of all time
At one point in time, there was no way to watch your favourite movies of all time without the humble DVD, a video format that compressed a movie onto a handy disc rather than a bulky VHS tape. First released in 1996 before the rise of Netflix in 2007 would spark its downfall, DVDs were immensely popular in the early 2000s, providing Hollywood with a great deal of revenue long after the release of the actual movie.
The iconic actor Matt Damon spoke recently about how movie productions have changed since the 1990s, naming the change in DVD sales as a major shift. “So what happened was the DVD was a huge part of our business, of our revenue stream,” Damon stated: “Technology has just made that obsolete, and so the movies that we used to make you could afford to not make all of your money when it played in the theatre because you knew you had the DVD coming behind the release”.
It is indeed hard to forget just how popular those humble little discs were in the early 2000s, with the list of the ten best-selling DVDs of all time revealing just how much money they used to make.
Understandably, the entire list is made up of children’s flicks, or, at the least, movies targeted at younger audiences, with Disney being behind half of the films on the list, including the three Pixar movies The Incredibles, Cars and Finding Nemo, which sold a grand total of 77,500,000 DVD copies. In addition, Disney was also behind the first two movies in the live-action Pirates of the Caribbean series, with the Johnny Depp-led films selling over 32 million copies.
Elsewhere, there are two superhero movies on the list, one from Marvel and the other from DC. The 2008 Christopher Nolan film The Dark Knight sold 19,200,000 copies, just 300,000 under how many Sam Raimi and his team managed to shift for the Tobey Maguire-led Spider-Man film from 2002.
But, the highest-selling DVD of all time is none other than the aforementioned Pixar flick Finding Nemo from 2003, one of the animation company’s most beloved movies.
Take a look at the full list of the ten best-selling DVDs of all time below.
The 10 best-selling DVDs:
- The Incredibles (Brad Bird, 2004) – 15,600,000
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (Gore Verbinski, 2006) – 16,500,000
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Gore Verbinski, 2003) – 16,600,000
- Transformers (Michael Bay, 2007) – 17,000,000
- Shrek 2 (Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, Conrad Vernon, 2004) – 18,200,000
- Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) – 19,000,000
- The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008) – 19,200,000
- Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2002) – 19,500,000
- Cars (John Lasseter, Joe Ranft, 2006) – 23,100,000
- Finding Nemo (Andrew Stanton, 2003) – 38,800,000
