Japan Box Office Report – December 4th/5th


Space Battleship Yamato” finally docked at Japan, and almost 800,000 people made the decision to board the ship. Overall, the movie opened on 440 screens and made a little less than 950 million Yen(11.5 million USD) during the five days it has been out. Their strategy to open the movie on a Wednesday to push the word-of-mouth advertisement prior to its first weekend seems to have helped, as there have been quite a few reviews stating it’s much better than initially thought. Many fans of the glorious anime, as well as haters of Kimura Takuya, had been worried that it would end up being an utter failure as a live action conversion, but luckily it exceeded their expectations.
The actual weekend box office revenue for Yamato comes to 530 million Yen (6.4 million USD). The overall and the weekend results would have been much higher with a Saturday release since the tickets tend to be much more expensive on weekends, but the early push of word-of-mouth advertisement might help it for the coming weekends. This becomes even more obvious when looking at the results of a survey that the distributor TOHO held during the movie’s first five days.
44.4% of all the people that have seen the movie have been in their forties, 19% in their thirties, 15% in their fifties, and only 12.9% in their twenties! This shows that the majority of those who went to see it first were fans of the original anime back in the day, and more than 50% stated that they only went to see it because they are a fan of the anime and were curious about the live-action adaption. 15.8% only went because of Kimura Takuya, and a mere 5.3% were simply curious about the hyped special effects.
The new “Bleach” movie has been the second best new entry this weekend, slightly above “Bushi no Kakeibo” (aka “Abacus and Sword”) starring Sakai Masato and Nakama Yukie. Don’t get confused by the fact that the latter isn’t specified as a new movie this week. Its nationwide release was on December 4th, but it actually already got released throughout the Ishikawa prefecture one week earlier. Despite its limited early release, it just missed entering the Top 10 last week, which is quite an achievement if you ask me.
Other notable releases this weekend are Gerard Butler’s “GAMER” and the South Korean thriller “Best Seller“. Of course, there have been a couple of interesting low-budget Japanese movies this week once again, like “Light Novel no Tanoshii Kakikata” which stars Berryz Koubou member Sudo Maasa.
Be sure to check out the trailers below the ranking!
Rank/LastTitleWeeks
01 (00)Space Battleship Yamato01
02 (01)Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I03
03 (00)Bleach: Hell Chapter01
04 (11)Bushi no Kakeibo02
05 (02)SP: The Motion Picture06
06 (00)Killers01
07 (03)Ghost04
08 (04)Despicable Me06
09 (05)Heart Catch Pretty Cure!
Fashion And Adventure In Paris!
06
10 (07)Paranormal Activity 2: Tokyo Night03




Space Battleship Yamato




Bushi no Kakeibo” (Abacus and Sword)




Yoi ga Sametara, Uchi ni Kaerou” (starring Asano Tadanobu and Nagasaku Hiromi)




Light Novel no Tanoshii Kakikata” (starring Sudo MaasaSato Hisanori, and Taketatsu Ayana)

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