'Beowulf' vanquishes DVD rivals

March 06, 2008 Paramount Home Entertainment's "Beowulf" scored a double victory on the DVD charts for the week ending March 2, topping both the sales and rental lists in its first week in release. The computer-animated fantasy, which grossed $82.2 million in theaters, pushed the previous week's top seller and renter, Universal's "American Gangster," to No. 2 on both the Nielsen Videoscan First Alert sales chart and Home Media Magazine's rental chart. The looming Easter gift-giving season, and a big nationwide retail promotion, brought several top sellers from the fourth quarter of 2007 back to the top of the sales chart, including Disney's "Ratatouille," which re-entered the chart at No. 3; Paramount/DreamWorks' "Transformers" and "Shrek the Third," which came in at No. 5 and No. 7, respectively; and Fox's "The Simpsons Movie," which landed at No. 8.

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