The biggest local film at the box office in 2009 – Mao's Last Dancer – has topped the local DVD sales chart in 2010.
The film, which is based on the autobiography of Chinese-Australlian ballet dancer Li Cunxin, was the 20th overall best selling DVD in 2010 according to data from GfK Australia. James Cameron’s Avatar topped the overall list, followed by Twilight: New Moon and Up.
Mao’s Last Dancer grossed more than $15.4 million at the Australian box office in 2009 and it now stands as the twelfth most successful local film of all time.
A spokeswoman for Roadshow, which distributed the DVD, said it had sold more than 100,000 units including Blu-ray and standard DVD releases.
“It was our third highest-selling DVD of 2010 (behind Sex and the City 2 and Sherlock Holmes), and is now ranked in Roadshow’s top 100 selling DVDs of all time, so we’re especially proud of its success,” she said.
It follows an initial disagreement over the DVD release when producer Jane Scott took legal action against Village Roadshow and Hopscotch (which co-managed the theatrical release), claiming that the distributors failed to pay royalties after mistakenly releasing the DVD without copy-protection technology. The dispute was later settled out of court.