Super Hero Franchises Drive Revenue Across Screens

PORTLAND, Ore., May 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- With the much anticipated premiere of "The Avengers" looming, Rentrak (NASDAQ: RENT), the leader in multi-screen media measurement serving the advertising, television and entertainment industries, today reported that Super Hero franchises have helped bolster box office returns and drive revenue across screens.

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In an analysis of the top action hero movie franchises including "Batman," "Fantastic Four," The Incredible Hulk," "Iron Man," Spider-Man," and "X-men,"  Rentrak shows that movie distributors have a sophisticated understanding of how to optimize the value of their inventory.   Not only do movies that open in more locations gross higher dollars, those movies also earn higher per theater dollars.  The studios, in partnership with the theater chains, are making sure that the maximum amount of revenue can be gained at both the gross and per capita level.  The two graphs below illustrate this point.  Graph 1 shows how gross dollars move as more theaters are included. Graph 2 shows how per capita theater dollars increase as super hero movies play in more theaters.

Graph 1: Opening Weekend Gross Dollars and Locations for Super Hero Franchises:
(Link to graph: http://www.rentrak.com/images/superhero_01.jpg)

Graph 2: Per Theater Revenue- Opening Weekend Super Hero Dollars:
(Link to graph: http://www.rentrak.com/images/superhero_02.jpg)

Action hero movies also do well in the home entertainment market. Top-10 lists for the most popular comic book and Super Hero movies for DVD and BD sales and VHS, DVD and BD rentals are listed below.

Top-10 DVD and BD Sellers:

Source: Rentrak. This chart represents the Top-10 ranked combined comic book & Super Hero DVD and BD films ranked by units sold through brick and mortar stores in the U.S. (DVD from 2005 to present and BD from 2010 to present).

Top-10 VHS, DVD and BD Rentals:

Source: Rentrak. This chart represents the Top-10 ranked combined comic book & Super Hero VHS, DVD, and BD films ranked by units sold through brick and mortar stores in the U.S. from 2001 to the present.

As the trusted standard for all studio box office reporting, Rentrak provides intelligence into overnight theatre-level reporting across the global theatrical market. Rentrak delivers real time geographic-specific box office collection which provides users with instant analysis of 99 percent of the domestic box office landscape and from 17,000 theaters representing 80,000 screens in over 25 territories* globally. Rentrak's Retail Essentials measures weekly consumer sales activity on standard DVD and Blu-ray Disc titles in the U.S. brick-and-mortar channel and Rentrak's Home Video Essentials is an exclusive rental point-of-sale (POS) tracking system, which calculates title-level performance via rental transactions on over 65,000 DVD and video game properties in the brick‑and‑mortar, by-mail/online subscription and kiosk channels across North America.

*Territory is a movie industry term for a region of the world representing multiple countries.

About Rentrak Corporation

Rentrak (NASDAQ: RENT) is a global digital media measurement and research company, serving the most recognizable companies in the entertainment industry. With a reach across numerous platforms including box office, multi-screen television, and home video, Rentrak has developed more efficient metrics to be used as database currencies for the evaluation and selling of media. Rentrak is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, with additional U.S. and international offices. For more information on Rentrak, please visit www.rentrak.com.

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Contacts for Rentrak Corporation:   
Sallie Olmsted / Amanda Bialek   
Office: 310-854-8124 / 310-854-8151   
Email: [email protected] / [email protected]

SOURCE Rentrak Corporation