Bruce Willis as John McClane in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (2007).
© 20th Century Fox

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DIE HARD Debuts On Top of DVD Charts

The unrated LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (complete with numerous F-Bombs) and the record holiday spending week has placed the fourth installment of John McClane on top of the DVD charts. The film won out on both the rental and sales race for DVD even though it had 2 other new releases in the market two days before the holiday.

New Line's Hairspray -- with $118.8 million in boxoffice revenue, compared with $134.5 million for Die Hard 4.0 -- finished second on Home Media Magazine's video rental chart with $9.6 million in revenue, behind $12.4 million for the Fox actioner.

But Hairspray was outsold by Paramount/DreamWorks' Shrek the Third, which took the No. 2 spot on the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert sales chart in its second week. Hairspray debuted at No. 3 on the sales chart, just ahead of Disney's Ratatouille, which in its third week was No. 4 on the sellers list.

The other new-to-DVD theatrical release, Disney's The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, debuted at No. 5 on the DVD sales chart and No. 9 on the rental chart with $4.7 million. The third installment in the Tim Allen comedy franchise is a theatrical hit from the 2006 holiday season that grossed $84.5 million on the big screen.

Black Friday deep-discounting, which saw recent theatricals go for less than $6 at Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and other big national discount chains, spurred sales of catalog titles. Catapulting back into the First Alert top 10 after a long absence were Warner's Blood Diamond (No. 8) and Happy Feet (No. 9) and New Line's The Notebook (No. 10).