US release: 20th May 2011
Russia release: 11th May 2011
France release: 14th May 2011
£32.9 Million $241.1 Million
$1 BillionSales of films and TV show on a physical disk declined by 7.2% in 2011 while sales of digital media downloads rose by 12%. Despite this Blu-ray is growing with it now accounting for 18% of the market.
Rental sales for downloads are expected to get stronger and stronger as the video shop of the �90's continues to become a relic. The saviors for DVD/Blu-ray is the triple play disk set allowing for the consumer to have the Blu-ray, DVD and digital for mobile devices version of a film.
Despite this downturn in sales December saw a big increase in sales and accounted for nearly 25% of the yearly sales of physical disks, and Blu-ray saw a year on year increase of nearly 27%.
British films saw an incredible year for sales with the last 2 chapters of the Harry Potter series by far outselling everything else. The Kings Speech, The Inbetweeners and Paul also did very well with British talent attached. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides was also a big seller, it was made in Britain.
Despite the recession the home video market, which includes physical and digital media was worth £2,251 billion in 2011.
Here is the top 10 films and TV sales of 2011
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 simply did big business across the world in 2011 taking an incredible $1,327,655,619 in world wide box office takings.
The final instalment of the Harry Potter franchise made sure that no other franchise will come close to it for a while and it was the only film in the saga to break the billion pound mark in world grosses, although the 3D tax will have helped.
Coming in a healthy second is Transformers: Dark of the Moon which took $1,114,558,779, this is also the highest grossing film it's series, although to date there are only 3, more will follow. With Transformers taking over a billion it completed a top 10 of world box office films with over a billion.
Also worth a mention are Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides with just over a billion dollars, Kung Fu Panda with $659,230,261 and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 with $648,079,401.
It was not a great year for film at the box office this year despite the high taking of 3 films, they were exceptions. Next year is a good year for films and could well see box office takings increase with the likes of Batman, Spider-Man and The Hobbit.
The final instalment of Harry Potter saw the boy wizard go out with a bang, and it became the most successful film of the franchise in the process, and for 2011 it is the highest grossing film at the UK box office.
During its 10 week run it raked up £73,094,187 in UK box office takings, at todays cinema ticket prices that is about 13.5 million tickets making it the 30th top film in the UK by ticker sales. Other film to do well in 2011 were The kings Speech with £45.3 milion, The Inbetweeners with £45 million, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides with £32.9 million and The Hangover Part II with £32.7 million.
In all a good year for British films (is Harry Potter a British film?) with Blockbusters not doing so well, Breaking Dawn and Transformers Dark of the Moon performed well enough but they were big budget blockbusters and had higher expectations.
I think the winner of the year was The Inbetweeners Movie that performed well abouve expectations, made back its budget and secured a sequel in the process, al that for a little Channel 4 show about bad mouthed undersexed teens.