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EXCLUSIVE: Who says the home entertainment sector is dead? Lionsgate’s John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum has sold over 3M units in packaged media, electronic sales and VOD since its arrival in the post theatrical window in late August, becoming Lionsgate’s highest-grossing home entertainment title in five years since 2014’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1.
Among all of the mini-major’s electronic sell through titles, John Wick Chapter 3 is the biggest ever, surpassing John Wick Part 2 in its first three days of EST release. Chapter 3 became available on DVD/Blu-Ray on Sept. 10.
While the first John Wick didn’t really raise eyebrows at the global box office grossing close to $89M worldwide, Lionsgate saw the potential for a franchise given that pic’s boom in the home entertainment market. John Wick: Chapter Two validated Lionsgate’s expectations, making $171.5M WW, $92M domestic. They did even better with Chapter 3 which made $171M domestic, $321M WW, nearly double the previous installment. Chapter 3 was one of the summer’s stand-out pics, impressive from a mini-major in a sea of Disney IP fare that crushed the competition. Chapter 3 is currently the 8th highest grossing pic stateside at the B.O., 6th highest domestic for the summer season. Lionsgate tells us that John Wick 3 is over-indexing on home entertainment platforms at a level comparable to action titles that have grossed over $250 million at the domestic B.O., underscoring its appeal to home entertainment consumers.
The success of Chapter 3 between its B.O. results and home entertainment is a throwback to when films truly minted a lot of bucks in the post theatrical window. With the arrival of digital, majors have complained that they’ve seen their home entertainment revenues shrink for films. Their way of dealing with this is creating their own streaming services, in an effort to hopefully cut down the theatrical-to-home window release, maximize overall monies for a title and save on ancillary P&A spend. If there’s a long gap between the jump from theatrical to home entertainment, studios have to resuscitate a title in the latter’s window.
“The popularity of the John Wick franchise continues to surge with strong growth across packaged media, electronic sell-through and video-on-demand platforms,” said Lionsgate President of Worldwide Home Entertainment Ron Schwartz. “The success of John Wick: Chapter 3 is a testament to the film’s incredible cast, led by Keanu Reeves, and amazing creative team, the efforts of our sales and marketing executives, and the vibrancy of the home entertainment business across all of its platforms.”
John Wick 4 will be released in theaters nationwide on May 21, 2021.