Sunday, October 22, 2006

DVDs and Animation

Perusing the Hollywood Reporter, I came across this sales chart (and when you think about it a minute, it's kind of stunning...)

DVD SALES -- Mid-October 2006

1. Click

2. Little Mermaid

3. X-Men - The Last Stand

4. Waist Deep

5. Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties

6. Fox and the Hound

7. Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

8. Curious George

9. Prairie Home Companion

10. X-Men - Trilogy Pack

Now, consider the above. Adam Sandler's "Click" arrived a week or two ago and bumped "The Little Mermaid" (1989) from the number one position. "Garfield" was ambling along at #5. "The Fox and the Hound" (1981) entered the list at #6 (Soon to come: the recently completed sequel "Fox and the Hound 2"). And "Curious George," the last-released hand-drawn feature, was at #8.

So out of the eight top-selling DVDs, four were animated features. And two of THOSE were released in the 1980s. Can anybody think of the last time two live-action features from the 1980s placed at the top of the 2006 DVD sales charts? I didn't think so.

When you're down-hearted about the gloom-and-doom that gets spouted regarding the state of animation, think about the list of titles immediately above. And know it comprises four more reasons that animation will continue to be produced.

3 comments:

Michael Sporn said...

Kindly note that three of the four animated features are 2D. Only Garfield is CG.

Kevin Koch said...

Is there any doubt that, 20 years from now, lots of the current CG films will be on the list of top DVDs (or whatever technology dominates then)?

Anonymous said...

20 years from now there'll problably be another type of media, and we'll end up buying some of the same movies yet again.

vhs>dvd>hddvd/bluRay>?!

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