James Cameron's 3D big-screen blockbuster Avatar (above, Pandora's floating mountains) has already become a 2D DVD and Blu-ray blockbuster. On its first day out, Thursday, Earth Day, Avatar set the Blu-ray sales record for one day, with 1.5 million copies sold. (Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight had been the previous record holder with 600K Blu-ray copies sold.)
According to estimates, overall 4 million copies of Avatar have been sold. [Addendum: Actually, a later report says that 3.2 million copies were sold. See AVATAR Sells 5.2 Million Copies First Two Days.]
Avatar producer Jon Landau was quoted as saying in The Hollywood Reporter that "we're not focusing on sales. We're focusing on the [Earth Day] events" that have been tied to Avatar's DVD launch. Landau then talked about kids being "the future" and that the Avatar release is "raising awareness."
How many of those kids will actually go home aware that global warming is quite possibly the most serious threat currently facing planet Earth, and how many will actually change their lifestyles for that reason are whole different matters. They should have statistics for those things as well.
A 3D version of Avatar is expected to come out later in the year, perhaps as early as November. (The film is also expected to hit 3D theaters once again in August, with six extra minutes of footage.) The 3D DVD release will be a "special" version with an array of bonus features. If that'll be the "Special Collector's Edition" remains to be seen. 20th Century Fox may want to keep on "raising awareness" until Pandora's waterfalls have gone dry.
To date, the Robert Pattinson-Kristen Stewart-Taylor Lautner romantic triangle The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which raised awareness about the dangers of interspecies dating, has sold 6.5 million copies since late March — 4 million of these on its first two days out. For now, New Moon holds the year's DVD record.
Photo: Avatar (WETA / 20th Century Fox)