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.
They are:
10: The Incredibles (Brad Bird, 2004) – 15,600,000
9: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (Gore Verbinski, 2006) – 16,500,000
8: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Gore Verbinski, 2003) – 16,600,000
7: Transformers (Michael Bay, 2007) – 17,000,000
6: Shrek 2 (Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, Conrad Vernon, 2004) – 18,200,000
5: Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) – 19,000,000
4: The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008) – 19,200,000
3: Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2002) – 19,500,000
2: Cars (John Lasseter, Joe Ranft, 2006) – 23,100,000
1: Finding Nemo (Andrew Stanton, 2003) – 38,800,000
Yeah, back in the day you had to buy or rent a film you wanted to see that wasn’t in the cinemas. Now I stream.them.or watch them in the big screen and buy a physical copy of the films I love - they have to earn their shelf space these days.