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Evangelion:2.0 Opens at #1 with 512 Million Yen

Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance, the second film in Hideaki Anno and Khara's four-part theatrical remake of Gainax's Neon Genesis Evangelion anime series, opened as the #1 film at the Japanese box office during the June 27-28 weekend. The film was seen 354,852 times on about 120 screens and earned 512,180,200 yen (about US$5.371 million) over those two days. That is about twice the opening weekend's box office return for the first film (Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone), which ran on only 84 screens. For the second film, each participating theater earned an average of more than 4 million yen (US$40,000) in two days.

The Shinjuku Milano 1, the Tokyo Theater with Japan's largest seating capacity at 1,046, reported standing-room-only audiences for all of its screenings. As a result, this one screen brought in 5,294 attendees and 7,854,500 yen (US$82,400) in just five showings on the first day. 5,408 attendees spent 7,828,900 yen (US$82,100) on another five showings on the second day. Shinjuku Milano's high attendance was spurred in part by the various street events held just outside the theater. Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone was originally slated to open in Tokyo's 224-seat Cinema Square Tōkyū theater in 2007 until the demand for tickets prompted a move to the larger Shinjuku Milano 1 theater.

Rookies: Graduation (Rookies ~Sotsugyō-), Yūichirō Hirakawa's theatrical finale to his live-action television drama adaptation of Masanori Morita's Rookies baseball manga, dropped to #2 in its fifth weekend on 428 screens. In 30 days, moviegoers spent over 6.7 billion yen (about US$70 million) to watch the film over 5.5 million times. Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen film dropped from #2 to #3 in Japan during its second weekend, although it earned an estimated US$201 million in its first five days in the United States.

Source: MyCom Journal, Oricon, MovieWalker

Images © Khara