The Weekly Watch Report: A second time on top for Sonic the Hedgehog

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

As the world collectively waits for movie theaters to begin opening their doors and serving up overpriced popcorn, instead of box office reporting we'll be taking a look at what audiences are checking out at home with the Weekly Watch Report. You can catch up with last week's column RIGHT HERE.

The Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) tracks the activity of home media and calculating the most popular titles across DVD and Blu-Ray sales, and Digital VOD sales and rentals. (Note that their metrics do not include "Premium" VOD titles, which typically run $19.99 for a 48-hour rental.)

Below are the most recent DEG rankings for the week ending May 30, 2020.

The hit video game comedy-adventure SONIC THE HEDGEHOG maintained enough speed to stay ahead of the pack since its recent release on DVD and Blu-ray (Buy it HERE!), but Sega's gold-grabbing mascot had some competition. The R-rated horror-thriller THE INVISIBLE MAN came sneaking up to second place thanks to brisk sales of digital downloads and physical media.

Director Leigh Whannell's modernized twist on the Universal monster is also still the top download over on iTunes. Blumhouse's new version of H.G. Wells' classic tale with Elisabeth Moss, Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid, and Oliver Jackson-Cohen already managed to pull in $126 million at the worldwide box office earlier this year (on a $7 million cost).

Without any major new releases hitting home release, the rest of the chart mostly just shifted positions from last week. The Pixar fantasy ONWARD dropped a few spots after its recent DVD/Blu-ray release. Vin Diesel's Valiant comic adaptation BLOODSHOT remains surprisingly popular, while other movies that got shorted at the 2020 box office like Ben Affleck's sports drama THE WAY BACK and Harrison Ford's dog adventure THE CALL OF THE WILD are getting a second chance from home viewers. Making a reappearance was Adult Swim's cartoon "Rick and Morty" as the fourth season came to a close, while the only title to depart the list this week was STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER.

Warner Bros. also made the recent legal drama JUST MERCY available to view for free this week in light of recent events. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, the fact-based civil rights story with Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx can be watched all month.

On the streaming side, the Netflix Top 10 also didn't change too much over the past week. Still popular were "Riverdale", "Outer Banks", "The Flash", "Sweet Magnolias", "Dead To Me" and animated series "Avatar: The Last Airbender", along with their new docuseries "Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich". Joining them this week was the final season of "Fuller House" and new episodes of fighting anime "Baki". But taking the highest honor was the new comedy show "Space Force", a satire with Steve Carell and John Malkovich stuck in charge of getting "boots on the moon".

Meanwhile, beyond Netflix, it seems that the new "Looney Tunes" cartoons over on HBO Max were the most-watched show out of everything else streaming except for STAR WARS series "The Mandalorian" on Disney+, and putting Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny ahead of "The Sopranos" and "Game of Thrones" on HBO's just-launched streaming service.

As for movies in actual movie theaters, things seem promising for the near future. There's a chance that up to 90% of theaters around the planet could be open by mid-July, which would mean that the action-thriller TENET will get the wide(ish) release that Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. were hoping (the release hasn't budged from its July 11th date)… even if the Russell Crowe road-rage movie UNHINGED beats it to screens on July 4th.

Theater chain Cinemark has a plan to start opening locations some time this month — although they are apparently only "encouraging" masks to be worn instead of making it a requirement, even as coronavirus cases are spiking again. On the other hand, there are reports that the biggest cinema company, AMC Theatres, has already lost over $2 billion since the beginning of the year and has "substantial doubts" that they will be able to stay in business…

In addition to drive-ins, there are a few hundred independent theaters around the country that have already opened. And it seems that TROLLS WORLD TOUR, the animated sequel that raised controversy for jumping direct to Premium VOD instead of pushing its theatrical release, is at the top of the small amount of income being generated by ticket sales. But IFC's horror movie THE WRETCHED has still managed to pass $1 million from its showings at drive-in theaters — not a monumental figure, but impressive for a low-budget feature at a time when multiplexes are shuttered. And others are following suit, as the Bella Thorne crime-thriller INFAMOUS is heading to your local drive-in this weekend.

You can check out all previous box office reports, from the splendid time when theaters (and pretty much everything else) were open for business, RIGHT HERE,

Would you go to see Christopher Nolan's TENET in a theater next month? VOTE HERE!