So said Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, in a video interview with FT.com (Text transcript here). The company, the first studio to sign onto iTunes when it went video, has sold 1.3 million movies in 3 months ending December 2006. IN the interview, Iger dismissed fears that digital downloads would cannibalize DVD sales, pointing to record sales of Cars and of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, which is on course to be the biggest selling DVD ever. The launch of Pirates of the Caribbean and Cars on iTunes helped push Disney download sales through the 1m barrier, with the total number of Disney downloads sold on iTunes doubling over the Christmas period. Disney also put its TV programming on iTunes a year ago and has sold more than 20 million downloads.
Iger on retailers worried about Disney selling movies online: “It’s interesting, because a lot of the same consumer electronic devices that are being used by the consumer to consume our product on these new platforms are being sold by mass retailers. So their business is actually growing in some respects because they are selling the very goods that are being used to consume the things that we make.”
We will get more updated numbers I’m sure in the upcoming Disney Q4 earnings call on Feb 7th.