Planet Terror vs Death Proof

It's the battle of the Grindhouse. Who do you think will win? I'll give you a clue it's not Morgan Freeman.

You have to love the mainstream media for being completely useless. It was big news in April when Grindhouse was released and had a mega-disappointing opening of $11.6 million. The $60-million film only grossed $24 million in ticket sales by the end of its run.

The media was a blaze with speculation as to why the high profile project failed. Generally the blame was pointed at the project being badly marketed. Apparently a large portion of the market didn’t realize that the film was in fact two separate features being played together with fake trailers in between.

The two features being Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof and Robert Rodriquez’s Planet Terror. The media blamed the poor performance on Planet Terror mainly because critics loved Death Proof and many ticket patrons not knowing it was a double bill left after Planet Terror (which screened first). It also seems so did the studio as The Weinstein Co. decided to withdraw Grindhouse from Cannes in favour of a longer cut of the isolated Death Proof.

The poor box-office performance resulted in The Weinstein Co deciding to release the films separately on DVD and internationally. Now we have reached a phase in time where both films have had their separate DVD releases. And the media has done… nothing.

Death Proof has been in release for around 7 weeks and Planet Terror has now completed its 3rd. Yet there is no buzz about what happened with their sales figures. Well lets fill you in.

Planet Terror has convincingly drawn larger numbers than Death Proof in almost every respect. The film that was blamed for the failure of the Grindhouse venture is the more financially successful of the two. Lets look at the numbers.

Here are the first two weeks of DVD sales for Planet Terror and Death Proof:

Death Proof   DVD Week 1 - 367,661 total units sold - $8,242,960 total gross

Planet Terror DVD Week 1 - 424,474 total units sold - $9,741,678 total gross

Death Proof   DVD Week 2 - 479,019 total units sold - $10,803,080 total gross

Planet Terror DVD Week 2 - 561,524 total units sold - $12,886,976 total gross

Thus Planet Terror is about $2 million ahead of Death Proof after they both had two weeks of release. In terms of rentals Death Proof debuted to the tune of $2.87 million while Planet Terror soared past this with $5.77 million in its first week. As it currently stands Death Proof grossed $12.16 million after 7 weeks, while Planet Terror has grossed $14.45 million after just 3 weeks.

Anyway these figures would suggest that Planet Terror is the stronger of the two features. Plus there is this poll on sucksorrules.com that suggests the same thing. I think somebody owes Robert Rodriquez an apology.

Here are the Trailers: