They don’t call it king for nothing: Lion King 1-1/2 tops the most recent rental performance chart for direct-to-home animated features at almost $18 million. © Disney. All rights reserved.

Making movies is, in part, about making magic — more like, manufacturing magic — but also, for those who want to earn a living, it’s about making money. Ergo: show business. While there is a sense of glamorous achievement in exhibiting one’s films on the silver screen (a criterion, say, for Oscar consideration), most of the big bucks trickle in from a range of non-theatrical revenue streams. Among these, video/DVD is often regarded as an ancillary product or secondary distribution channel, but the format also serves nicely as a first-run venue for original titles.

To give some sense of the home entertainment market in the U.S., there were roughly 8,800 DVD titles (live-action and animation) scheduled for release during 2004, of which 13% were direct-to-home features; there were more than 470 direct-to-home animated properties for 2003-2004, comprising both features and compilations of episodic television. U.S. consumers spent $8.2 billion during 2003 renting videos and DVDs, and sales of videos and DVDs totaled $14 billion. These sales and rentals contributed to 60% of the revenues major studios earned from their film properties.

The fierce competition in the marketplace makes the sharing of financial information all but non-existent. When measuring revenue, industry groups that report on entertainment business often make calculations to extrapolate and compensate for non-reporting studios and retailers. For example, Wal*Mart, one of the largest retailers in the U.S., may account for 30% of a title’s sales. Therefore, in tracking shipped units and point-of-sales information, industry groups gather data from nearly 5,000 storefronts and make projections to reflect the whole universe of U.S. specialty video stores.

The cumulative rental revenues for direct-to-home animated properties offer a glimpse of the home entertainment market. A sampling of recent titles includes: