Music
11 Mar 10

The Hurt Locker Signals Blu-ray Breakthrough

Sales of The Hurt Locker, the dramatic story of a U.S. bomb disposal team in Iraq, have surged following the film's success in eclipsing Avatar, to pick up 6 Oscars at last Sunday's Academy Awards.

The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, took the key Academy Awards, emerging triumphant in both the Best Picture and Best Director categories.

Sales of the film on DVD across HMV's 280-strong chain, and online at hmv.com, have more than trebled since Monday compared to the same period a week ago, when the film was first released and entered the Official UK charts at No.4.

The Hurt Locker is now HMV's best seller by far this week – well ahead of such new releases as Saw 6, Julie and Julia and An Education. "It looks certain to leap up to the No.1 spot in the Official Video Charts, when these are announced at the weekend," one insider commented.

The sales of the film offer the best evidence yet that the Blu-ray format is finally taking off.

"40% – or four out of every ten – purchases are being made on Blu-ray, the new high-definition format," a HMV spokesperson told Hot Press. "This is one of the highest proportions for any film release since Blu-ray was launched, and demonstrates that increasing numbers of movie fans are now switching to the format as hardware penetration of Blu-ray players in people's homes grows and consumer awareness of the format's enhanced picture and sound capabilities continues to increase accordingly."

Independently made on a tight budget, The Hurt Locker had generated less that $20 million in the US prior to its Oscar triumph. It was not big box office in cinemas in the UK and Ireland.

"The Hurt Locker barely took a million at the box office when it first came out over a year ago," Rudy Osorio, Head of DVD at HMV comments. "In fact it's one of the lowest-grossing Best Picture winners of all time, so there's clearly a huge amount of people that haven't seen this fantastic film yet.

"DVD sales were therefore always going to surge following its Oscar success as people rush to see it," Osorio added. "But it's great to see that so many of them are doing so on Blu-ray, so that they can enjoy its amazing visual and sound effects in the spectacular, high definition quality that it deserves."

HMV are the UK & Ireland's leading DVD and Blu-ray retailer.