'Moneyball' Scores No. 1 Spot on Home Entertainment Charts

3:42 PM PST 1/18/2012 by Thomas K. Arnold

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Columbia TriStar

"Moneyball"

"Killer Elite," "Boardwalk Empire" round out the top three on the DVD, Blu-ray sales lists.

The post-holiday new releases continue to trickle in as Hollywood mines its leftover 2011 theatricals for January and February release, amid hopes that home entertainment industry’s so-called “fifth quarter” will prove a fruitful one as consumers cash in gift cards or look for discs to play on their new Blu-ray players.

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The big tentpoles were all released in advance of the holidays. And thus it is that a modest theatrical success, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s Moneyball, scored a rare triple play the week ending Jan. 15, debuting at No. 1 on both the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert sales chart and Nielsen’s dedicated Blu-ray Disc sales chart, as well as Home Media Magazine’s rental chart.

Moneyball, a baseball biodrama starring Brad Pitt and Robin Wright, grossed $75.4 million in U.S. theaters during the fall. According to Nielsen data, 44 percent of first-week sales were on Blu-ray Disc.

Bowing at No. 2 on both sales charts was another fall 2011 theatrical, Universal Studios’ Killer Elite, which stars Robert De Niro and earned $25 million at the box office. (Universal is one of the studios that holds back releases from Netflix and Redbox by 28 days, so it didn’t appear among Home Media Research’s Top 20 rentals.)

Killer Elite generated 53 percent of first-week sales from Blu-ray Disc.

And, again on both sales charts, Warner’s Boardwalk Empire: The Complete First Season debuted at No. 3, generating 39 percent of its total sales from the Blu-ray format.

On Home Media Magazine’s rental chart, the No. 2 spot went to 20th Century Fox’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, fresh off its 28-day rental holdback. The Hangover Part II, the previous week’s top renter, slipped to No. 3.