The focus is shifting. Export is becoming more and more important for the entertainment industry. And while the US might be still ahead, more and more countries are developing wealthy consumers who are ready to take over.

We saw it already with movies like ‘10,000 B.C.’ and ‘The Kingdom of Heaven.’ The last made just $47 million domestically, a flop compared to its $130 million budget. But if you take into account the $164 million it made overseas, it didn’t do that bad after all.

We see the same for 2007, looking at the totals for rental dollars from movie theaters, TV fees and VHS/DVD receipts. The US ended with a negative balance of -8%, not able to grow in any way. The international markets however, were up 9%, making up for the loss in the US.

Home video sales in the US took an even worse beating, down 17% from 2006. This, while international sales were up 5%.

If this trend continues, Hollywood has to let go of the US as its main market. Simultaneous releases into their main worldwide territories would have to become a priority. Not just for some movies, like it is now, but for all movies. We already saw how Sony locked up Jeff Blake, who’s responsible for global distribution at Sony. And I wouldn’t expect it to end there. Hollywood is getting ready to become Hollyworld.

While ‘Juno’ dragged her belly into every DVD store to get the top spot last week, the ‘Cloverfield’ monster scared her to the second place this time. Both in the sales and rental department ‘Cloverfield’ managed to take the top spot. Although it didn’t make the $8.4 million in rentals ‘Juno’ made last week, the monster picture still did an estimated $7.5 million.

This week ‘Juno’ made another $6.9 million in rentals, followed by the $75 million ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ with $6.7 million, which also came in third in sales. And since it wasn’t very successful at the box office, a third place is very decent for this political drama.

Apple stock jumped over 2% when the company announced they are going to release movies simultaneous with their physical counterpart DVD. Normally the iTunes store would have to wait over a month to get a new movie in, but most Hollywood studios are now releasing their babies right onto the net.

The news comes just days after the MPAA stated the industry was too slow with adjusting to their ‘tech-savvy’ crowd. The time has come for Hollywood to embrace digital distribution. “This is a really good example of how they are moving more quickly toward it and we think Apple is best-positioned (to benefit),” said analyst Shannon Cross of Cross Research.

A iTunes movie will only set you back between $9.99 and $14.99, which isn’t as overprices as you would expect. Not at all. The major drawback however, still seems the limited playback capability of all digital downloads. In this case mostly restricted to Apple hardware. When will we see an universal format we can play and keep forever?