Universal came out a week or so ago to announce that their digital release of ‘Trolls World Tour‘ was a success, but they didn’t provide any numbers.
Now, we’re getting data, and it’s pretty impressive. The movie was made available to rent for a cool $19.99 on April 10, and now three weeks later, it’s reportedly made $100 million.
The first ‘Trolls‘ movie made $153.7 million during its run at the domestic box office back in 2016, but you have to remember theaters typically take around 50% of box office sales.
Sometimes the theater will take a little less. So, ‘Trolls’ only deposited around $77 million into Universal’s pocket by the end of its run in North America.
For comparison, Universal retained about 80% of the digital rental or purchase fee for ‘Trolls World Tour.’
So it’s likely the studio has actually made more money from the digital release of Trolls World Tour. Universal also did similar digital releases with a handful of other films (including The Invisible Man) and those films have brought in around $60 million in rental fees.
Safe to say, Universal is winning the quarantine game. I’m honestly a little surprised. I didn’t think people would be willing to pay the $19.99 to rent a film from home, but obviously I was wrong.
This has to make theaters a little nervous.
