‘Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker’ May Still Be The Most Popular Movie In America

The Digital Entertainment Group is reporting that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was the most “watched at home” movie last week.

Compiled from cable, satellite and Internet VOD, as well as surveys from most key retailers for physical and media sales, The Digital Entertainment Group (company that advocates and promotes entertainment platforms, products and distribution channels) has begun offering what they are billing as the “Watched From Home Top 20.” I’d say it was a close cousin for theatrical box office for the post-theatrical marketplace, with the caveat that it ranks via transactions and “units” sold or rented, rather than pure revenue earned. So with that out of the way, what do we have?

First of all, these rankings do not include “premium VOD” titles like Universal and DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls: World Tour or Warner Bros.’ upcoming digital release of Scoob. Nonetheless, this is otherwise essentially “tickets sold” versus raw dollars accumulated. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is the top “watched at home movie” this week (ending on April 18), as it was last week. The Walt Disney title is available via DVD, Blu-ray and 4K HD and for digital rental or purchase in various formats. It’s also, minor detail, a friggin Star Wars movie.

It’s exactly the kind of impulse purchase or rental that is all-but-guaranteed to thrive in these perilous times, or really any time of the year. There’s a reason why Disney threw Pixar’s Onward onto Disney+ just weeks after its aborted theatrical release, while letting The Rise of Skywalker have its conventional post-theatrical “from theaters to electronic-sell-through-to-DVD/VOD-to-streaming or cable” lifespan. People will buy blu-rays and DVDs for the Skywalker finale, even if they didn’t like the movie. Fans and collectors are like that.

Moreover, if you want to note that The Rise of Skywalker earned $105 million less domestically than The Last Jedi and $422 million less than The Force Awakens (okay, that’s a huge downturn and a record from a “part 1” to “part 3,” but I’m being positive today), then you’ll also note that there are plenty of casual moviegoers and casual Star Wars fans who are now stuck at home with the ability to rent or buy that Star Wars episode that they didn’t see in theaters. The more folks who didn’t see it in theaters, the more folks there are, especially sans the ability to socialize or leave the house, who are now inclined to sample it at home.

The rest of the list is pretty self-explanatory. The biggest movie of the last quarter of 2019 (Star Wars IX) is followed by the two biggest “new” movies of the first quarter of 2019 (Bad Boys for Life and Sonic The Hedgehog), although the kid-friendly/distraction-appeal of Dolittle is keeping it right alongside Jumanji: The Next Level (which was the year’s biggest global grosser that wasn’t a Disney flick or a comic book movie).

Watched at home away from the hype, Robert Downey Jr’s much-maligned Dolittle (which earned an okay $225 million global but on a ridiculous $175 million budget) is likely playing as a passable “Well, this could have been better” family flick as opposed to the end of all things. Granted, I made my wife watch Cats last week, and yeah, as much as I admire its go-for-broke visual insanity and general “you ain’t seen nothing like this ever in any movie” mentality, it really doesn’t work. Anyway, my “in defense of Dolittle and Cats” post can wait for another day.

I do think it’s amusing that Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen and Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey are back-to-back in the rankings this week, since, just as Captain America: The Winter Soldier was a comic book version of a Tom Clancy thriller, Birds of Prey works as a gonzo-bananas, cocaine-fueled, female-fronted variation on a stereotypical Guy Ritchie gangster movie. I’d happily argue that the Harley Quinn flick is better than the Matthew McConaughey crime flick, but A) the quality difference isn’t as extreme as The Winter Solider and Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit and B) Snatch still holds up as a pinnacle of the modern British gangster movie.

Beyond that, there’s not much I can offer without actual hard numbers to dissect, which is going to be an ongoing issue until A) theaters re-open and new movies start getting released or B) we start getting some $$ figures for these films. For the record, despite not being included, Universal’s pVOD titles (Trolls: World Tour, Emma, The Invisible Man, The Hunt) have been pretty well. In terms of revenue, they are huge successes. The key caveat that A) we’re all stuck at home, B) there are no new movies in theaters and C) Universal would have preferred conventional theatrical success stories.

DEG – Watched at Home Top 20

1 Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Disney
DIS
)

2 Bad Boys For Life (Sony)

3 Sonic the Hedgehog (Paramount)

4 Dolittle (Universal
UHS
)

5 Jumanji: The Next Level (Sony)

6 The Call of the Wild (Disney, 2020)

7 The Gentlemen (STX/Universal, 2019)

8 Birds of Prey (WB)

9  1917 (Universal)

10 Little Women (Sony, 2019)

11 Bloodshot (Sony, 2020)

12 The Way Back (WB, 2020)

13 Underwater (Fox)

14 Knives Out (Lionsgate)

15 Just Mercy (WB)

16 Ford v Ferrari (Fox)

17 Spies in Disguise (Fox)

18 Onward (Disney)

19 Frozen II (Disney)

20 Harry Potter (WB, Complete 8-film Collection)