'Maria Full of Grace' Strongest Oscar Contender in Home Video Rental Market According to Rentrak Home Video Essentials

'Maria Full of Grace' Strongest Oscar Contender in Home Video Rental Market According to Rentrak Home Video Essentials

Best Actress Nomination Spurs Significant Consumer Interest in Newcomer Catalina Sandino Moreno

PORTLAND, Ore., Feb. 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Rentrak Corporation (NASDAQ:RENT), the originator of real-time home video tracking and analysis by Home Video Essentials(TM), today revealed that the best actress Oscar(R) nomination for Catalina Sandino Moreno has intensified the video rental activity for "Maria Full of Grace."

One week following the 77th Academy Awards(R) nominations announcement on Tuesday, January 25th, consumer interest in 23 year-old Catalina Sandino Moreno was evidenced by the 22% increase in overall home video rental activity for "Maria Full of Grace." Based on point-of-sale transactional data from Rentrak's Home Video Essentials(TM), 79% of the rental activity was attributed to the DVD format and 21% to VHS.

The HBO Films Production featuring Moreno in her first-ever film role has been nominated for nine film industry awards and has won 12 film festival awards worldwide to date.

"The best actress nomination has had an outstanding effect on this title," said Brad Hackley, vice president of business development for Home Video Essentials at Rentrak. "Of all the films available on home video nominated for an Oscar in any category, 'Maria' is the one film to date that has experienced a significant increase in activity while all others behaved normative in their respective rental cycles."

"Maria Full of Grace," an HBO Films Production distributed by Warner Home Video, has been in the home video market for eight weeks and has grossed a total of $3.5 million in combined DVD/VHS rental revenue.

About Home Video Essentials(TM)

Home Video Essentials(TM) Industry Data Service, part of Rentrak's Entertainment Essentials(TM) suite of web-based information management and business intelligence products, is Rentrak's exclusive point-of-sale (POS) tracking system which measures weekly national consumer spending and title-level performance via rental transactions on over 40,000 DVD, VHS, and videogame properties.

About Rentrak Corporation

Rentrak Corporation, based in Portland, Oregon, is the developer of the Essentials(TM) suite of web-based information management and business intelligence products used by clients in the media, entertainment, retail and manufacturing industries. Vertical market editions of Essentials(TM) applications are customizable to the needs of each licensee, allowing marketers to collect, manage, analyze and make critical business decisions based on detailed, real-time point-of-sale and supply chain data. The Essentials(TM) suite of services offers competitive advantages to executives by providing timely and actionable insight into their own company's performance in tandem with valuable perspective against aggregated industry-wide data. For further information, please refer to Rentrak's corporate Web site at http://www.rentrak.com/ .

NOTE: "Oscar" and "Academy Awards" are registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Contacts:

News Media
Rogers & Cowan
Sallie Olmsted/Susan Yin
310-854-8124/8145
solmsted/syin@rogersandcowan.com


Source: Rentrak Corporation

CONTACT: Sallie Olmsted, +1-310-854-8124, or
solmsted@rogersandcowan.com, or Susan Yin, +1-310-854-8145, or
syin@rogersandcowan.com, both of Rogers & Cowan, for Rentrak Corporation

Web site: http://www.rentrak.com/


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