April 16, 2020

With Covid-19 still running high, and the industryâs focus shifted to what people are watching at home, weâre please to announce the launch of a new chart here at The Numbers. The DEG Watched at Home Top 20 chart, produced by our friends at the Digital Entertainment Group, looks at the most popular films being watched at home each week. This includes traditional DVD and Blu-ray sales, digital sales (âESTâ), and digital rentals (âtVODâ), with rankings based on the total consumer spending for a given title across those four categories. Note that it does not currently include PVOD releases, like the recent debut of Trolls: World Tour. The weekly chart will be published each Thursday for the week ending the previous Saturday.

This week, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker led the way, as it did last week. This shouldnât come as too much of a surprise, because even though the film earned the weakest reviews of the live-action Star Wars films, it is still a Star Wars film.

Sonic the Hedgehog opened in second place last week and remained there this week. The film is one of the few bright spots at the 2020 box office and one of the few bright spots for Paramount in recent years.

On the other hand, Dolittle wonât be fondly remembered by many people. I donât know who disliked it more, critics or the accountants over at Universal. That said, it did place third on this weekâs chart, up from eleventh place last week. At this point, strong home market sales will only limit the filmâs losses, but at least it isnât doing as poorly as it could have.

A pair of Sony releases were next with Bad Boys for Life earning fourth place and Jumanji: The Next Level earning fifth place. Both films did huge box office business during 2020, which made Sony the leading distributor for the year when Covid-19 shut down theaters. I donât think it would have kept its lead, but it was a good story while it lasted.

- DEG Weekly Watched at Home Chart



C.S.Strowbridge