Forum - View topicNEWS: Miyazaki's Ponyo Drops to #12 with US$2.4 Million
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2324 |
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Do movies ever do better the second week than the first? You'd have to have practically no buzz beforehand and a crapload after, but has it ever happened?
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HyugaHinata
 Posts: 3505 |
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It depends a lot on word-of-mouth advertising. WOM can sometimes be more influential on a film's sales than marketing.
And then you could have just imported the DVD with subtitles from CDJapan. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4547 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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32.3% is a pretty decent drop.
Ponyo was never going to be a breakout hit, but that drop indicates fairly good word of mouth and/or repeat viewings, and it should probably hit the $10 million domestic milestone, which, for a non-franchise anime film in theatres, is excellent. |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
 Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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In just 2 weekends Ponyo has nearly doubled the gross earnings of Howl's of its entire theatrical run? Not bad. I personally think Ponyo will eventually reach #1 in terms of theatrical anime releases in the U.S. How much more does it need to earn?
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Navak
Posts: 88 |
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Like another 80 million depending upon inflation adjustments. Pokemon has quite the hold. |
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Tenchi
Posts: 4547 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Ponyo will likely end up as the number one anime film at the domestic box office not linked to a televised monster battle videogame or collectible card game franchise with a built-in juvenile audience.
That's as much as we can realistically hope for. |
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firedragon54738
 Posts: 3113 Location: wisconsin |
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movies never do as good as opening week but it still made that much for being limited
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MetatronM
Posts: 281 |
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It has absolutely no chance at such a thing. The best finish Ponyo can possibly hope for (and it will probably get) is 5th best all-time amongst anime. The top 4 are just massively out of reach and represent hugely popular cross-media phenomena amongst kids (i.e. Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!). Hell, the number 1 all-time (Pokemon: The First Movie) had an unadjusted opening weekend gross of $31m. That's at least double and probably close to 3 times greater than what Ponyo's FINAL gross will likely be. That said, Ponyo is doing very very well. A 32% drop in its second week is a very good result and indicates good word of mouth. It should be on pace to beat Spirited Away's mark ($10+m) by the end of next weekend if it can continue to hold on. That would make it the top grossing Miyazaki film ever in the US, even beating a film that had a rerelease due to an Oscar win. After that, though, there's not much to expect from it. Fourth best all-time is $17m (Pokemon 3), and it just ramps up from there. To 19.8m (Yu-Gi-Oh!) to 43.8m (Pokemon 2000) to 85.7m (Pokemon). |
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Ktimene's Lover
 Posts: 2242 Location: Glendale, AZ (Proudly living in the desert) |
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I see Ponyo having a success potential but it is really unlikely. Anime movies in USA theaters the past few years haven't done real well partially due to the limited number of theaters they put them in.
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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As Metatron said, that's HIGHLY unlikely. Why is everyone fixating on the gross? I don't know if the following figure is good or bad: With 927 theaters, Ponyo had an estimated per-screen average of US$2,620. Ticket sales dropped 32.3% from the first weekend. ... Ponyo is now the 7th highest grossing theatrical anime release in the United States and has moved ahead of Howl's Moving Castle (US$4,711,096). After their second full weekend of release, Princess Mononoke (1999) had earned US$592,844 on 38 theaters, Spirited Away (2002) had earned US$1,110,559 on 53 theaters, and Howl's Moving Castle (2005) had earned US$1,482,895 on 202 theaters. On one hand, you can say "yay, an anime release got a wide distribution". OTOH, you can say Ponyo got about 5x the gross on 4x the screens. (worse if you look at the specific weekend where Ponyo pulled about 3x the gross of Howls on 4x the screens, which would be notable for the drop from Ponyo since Howls only opened on about 35 screens and didn't get up to around 200 till its second week) So thinking Ponyo is going to find some massive bounce to get up to 20+ million even is somewhat optimistic. Barring an Oscar nom. I doubt it'll crest 15 mil, which would still make it the most profitable Ghibli theatrical release (as far as US audiences). |
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g*ni
Posts: 30 |
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I believe there's rampant speculation from the Anime fanbase that increased availability and marketing efforts will result in higher gross sales regional sales. And the fact is it likely won't. You can ask Disney why they didn't start the hype on Ponyo months in advance and why weren't trying as hard to promote this as a film from their digital division. If they were to give you a reply its likely that they've already done the figures on what they can expect in return and its just not worth it.
Both the anime and film community have generally given their support behind Miyazaki releases. And Ponyo is no exception. But it doesn't take many negative comments to sour sales. First and foremost are kids screaming to their parents "I want to see Ponyo!" Second, is it inline with the values parents want to instill on their kids. Unfortunately Ponyo is missing some of each. While the core character Ponyo starts out as an odd but cute looking fish that kids might gravitate towards, Disney did little to debase the film in an effort to market it-- and that's certain a sign of respect to the filmmaker. The second issue certainly won't drive recommendation to parents in their child's playgroups. Ponyo has certain non-conservative elements such as the love between two underage kids. It doesn't matter that the love between the two central characters is a pure and transcendental love. It creates issues that parents are unprepared or unwilling to answer. I read a few reviews where parents were suggesting their kids might come out from the theatre asking questions about love or spouting phrases containing "love him" or "love her." Its unfortunate, but sociological factors in the US have ingrain certain stereotypes that are difficult to break and harder to accept. However, what the sales figures do show is Anime-- non generic, non didactic, non product selling anime-- is slowly making gains in the US market. And that can only mean a greater effort from distributors like Disney to get more future titles in theatres. |
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g*ni
Posts: 30 |
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Well, its the primary indicator of what determines the success or failure of a theatrical release. So generally its good. When you go in for a pitch or you try to work out this or that agreement-- its the first figure you want coming out of your mouth. It really is a numbers game. I think Disney made out okay on the release. They could have optimized more on the number of theatres carrying the film. But overall its not bad. Let's compare the figures between the last Miyazaki release Howl's Moving Castle to Ponyo. If we go the first week of general availability-- week 2 of Howl's to week 1 of Ponyo-- we see that Howl's pulled in $4,280 avg per screen over 202 screens where Ponyo grossed $3,868 avg per screen over 927 screens. The figures, although lower per screen, clearly justify Disney's efforts for a wider general release. With the average decay in week-over-week sales of 30% to 50% typical with all films Disney can't expect to do much better with this Miyazaki release. Though a 10-15% decrease in theatres may have provided more optimal figures. *Figures from BoxOfficeMojo.com |
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jsyxx
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Hurry up dude, you're going to miss the late delivery of the New Frontiersman. You never know, it may not be delivered tommorow. |
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agr964
Posts: 19 |
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I just went to go see it today, but I got there a little late, so it was hard to find a seat. The theater was nearly full, with lots of kids and parents.
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Hon'ya-chan
 Posts: 973 |
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Wait for the DVD. The thought of hearing the Jonas Brother and Miley Cyrus' cousin just makes me wanna listen to the original Japanese version even more.
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