You probably don’t need us to tell you about Avatar‘s success. Avatar was a phenomenon before the James Cameron movie even came out in 2009. It’s the highest-grossing movie in the world and a success the likes of which we rarely see. Yet one film actually outdid the Na’Vi on the home media battlefield.
Avatar made its money in cinemas and on Blu-ray (and on DVD and 4K), but one of the best Disney movies actually managed to outsell the blockbuster. None other than Frozen has shifted more Blu-Rays than Sam Worthington’s trip to Pandora over the years.
According to The Numbers, Frozen has shipped 7,789,255 copies on Blu-ray. That’s a healthy amount of discs, and you’d expect no less from one of the best family movies of the decade. Where’d Avatar come in? A paltry 7,534,908. Get good, Cameron; those are rookie numbers!
Jokes aside, that’s a very close margin. Both are pop culture behemoths that enraptured the entire globe at the time of releases and have continued to resonate in the years after.
If we were to speculate on how Frozen managed to outdo the literal biggest film in the world, the answer probably lies in the intended audience. Frozen appealed to a lot of children, and that means parents pick up discs, so it’s always available to watch. Many of the best animated movies have long tails for that very reasons, and in the age of streaming, where libraries change on a dime, having the Blu-ray prevents those incidents.
Or maybe in the pantheon of the best movies, this is lowkey proof Elsa is more powerful than Pandora. Either way, Cameron lost the battle here, even if he won the war overall. Now we’re wondering where Frozen 2 stands in regards to Avatar 2.
Elsa’s sequel has a few years head start, but Avatar 2 shot right into the highest-grossing ever chart like it was effortless. We’ll find out sometime in the future! For the present, we have guides to the Frozen 3 release date and the Avatar 3 release date so you know when each is due to arrive. If you want to step away from the House of Mouse, we have a new movies list that’ll tell you about more of the little guys that aren’t Blu-ray bestsellers.