Hillary Swank’s ‘P.S. I Love You’ made some impact at the DVD stores last week. The $30 million romance made over $140 million at the box office worldwide and is now coming in at number one for DVD rentals and sales. ‘P.S. I Love You’ made $7.2 million in rentals, followed by ‘27 Dresses’ with another $6.1 million and ‘First Sunday’ with $5.6 million. Ice Cube’s ‘First Sunday’ was only successful in the US and made a little under $40 million at the box office.

The total for ‘27 Dresses’ now stands at $13.4 million in rentals and is holding up well against ‘The Golden Compass,’ which made another $5.3 million. ‘Twister’ came in as the number one ‘Blu-ray,’ where ‘The Golden Compass’ came in second.

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.

After a surprising box office success, ‘Juno’ is generating some heat in the DVD stores too. Getting in at the top spot, it beat last week’s ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ in the sales department. Alvin slipped to number three, with ‘Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem’ coming in second.

But the pregnant girl didn’t stop there. ‘There will be Blood,’ which came in first last week, lost its top stop to ‘Juno’ too. ‘There will be Blood’ went on to make more in rentals than it did at the box office. It made the third place with $15.6 million in rentals in two weeks, followed by ‘Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem’ with $7.7 million. ‘Juno’ managed to top that, with just $8.4 million.