“Frozen” has sold 3.2 million DVDs and Blu-rays, Walt Disney Studios said Wednesday.
Those figures make it one of the biggest home entertainment debuts of recent years; an accomplishment that is all the more notable because it takes place at a time when the DVD market has suffered a steep decline.
The movie officially debuted Tuesday, and the 3.2 million figure also includes pre-sales. Customers have been able to reserve copies on sites such as Amazon since November. Earlier on Wednesday, the digital retailer also said that “Frozen” has become the strongest selling home entertainment title in its history.
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Initial sales compare favorably with other recent home entertainment successes (studios don’t tend to share the bad results and disc sales are closely guarded). Earlier this month, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” sold an estimated 3.9 million DVD and Blu-Ray units in its first weekend of North American release.
In December, “Despicable Me 2” sold 4.5 million units, the most of any animated film during its first week since the first “Despicable Me” in 2010.
Disney took the unusual step of offering up the film for digital download while “Frozen” was still in the box office top 1o and three weeks before the film hit store shelves.
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The digital release was part of a larger initiative by Disney to draw attention to their iTunes-powered Disney Movies Anywhere service, which allows viewers to watch over 400 titles from the Disney, Marvel and Pixar collections. Disney became the first movie studio to partner with Apple on its cloud service.
“Frozen” has grossed more than $1 billion worldwide and is on pace to be the most successful in Disney’s history, surpassing “Toy Story 3.” Thanks to its ubiquitous anthem “Let it Go,” the soundtrack has sold over 1.4 million albums in the U.S. and has been streamed over 100 million times on Spotify, making it a music as well as movie hit.
For the record: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the 3.2 million units included digital sales and that the film went on sale on Wednesday. It debuted in stores on Tuesday and that figure only reflects Blu-ray and DVD sales.