Forum - View topicNEWS: Nausicaa Theatrical Release
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hikura
Posts: 565 |
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Once again i know it would be most likely a money losing propestion.I will ask this is not mean to be rude.Do you under understand what i am trying to say?To put it plainly,if it is well marketed the whole genre would start to be better off down the road and the wider audience would come to such movies..It would take time to better but the steps need to be taken now otherwise it wouldn't leave the niche market anytome soon.Or it will take twice or three times longer. Plus as a whole the american public tend to think down on certain types of film.But that has been changing slowly over years.If some companies would step forward and support more these types of films it would help the cause. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4561 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Once again, it's not the marketing, it's that the films are in a medium the wider North American adult audience won't bother to see, no matter how well the films are marketed. If there was that much of an audience for serious adult-oriented animation, the studios would cater to it already with original American productions more than a couple of times a secade. Saturation-level marketing follows the audience, it is not a panacea that can build an entirely new audience out of thin air. We're at more or less the saturation point for anime already, where it's accessible to anyone who wants it. It's just that most people don't want it and won't want it, in spite of marketing. The people in charge of the pursestrings know what they are doing; they aren't going to sink hundreds of millions of dollars marketing a whole slew of lost causes in the hopes that one of them somewhere far down the line will turn a profit with a wider public.
In short, I think anime, excluding the kiddy franchise stuff, is about as popular in the North American market as it ever will get and I don't think the failure of anime films to make Shrek-like numbers at the domestic box-office is due to lack of imagination or foresight among the people in charge of marketing. I think, if the audience was there, they would have already gone for it a long time ago. |
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Tenchi
Posts: 4561 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Foreign films get an extra calendar year after the release in their home market to be released in America and, thus, to be eligble for the Oscar. Nausicaa, under the rules for Best Animated Feature, would have to have been nominated by 1986 to have been eligible, and the Best Animated Feature category didn't even exist for another 16 years after that. |
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hikura
Posts: 565 |
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To have a market for a certain item you need to market said item.If a company(companies) do not market it or do such a limited release on a constant basis the market will not expand.Hence why compainies need to do this.No the market has not reached it max or near it.While agreed it wouldn't reach say the level a shrek movie but companies can make money.But they need to push it.Companies have only done two wider releases for movies(gits2 and spirited away) while this movies did well they have no real comparison to any other movies.Plus this what i would not call a huge relase(close yes).So how can you say the audience wasn't their when they have not really done a mass release of any movie and only released them in a handful of cities(a total of less then a dozen cities in the US when less then 15% of the US population live in those cities plus only release them for a limitied time)?
Edit:Let me add this.From 1984 to 94 anime and manga grew only a bit.Not saying companies did not push it out there.Just no big companies helped push it out.Come 94 into early 95 with a big push from companies putting out sailor moon,dragonball and ronin warriors.They took a chance with a limited market and won.From that point one they market grew very nicely to say the least.Perfect example of companies taking the chance and winning.It took a bit but it worked out for them.Now it will take companies a bit to get it out in movie theatres but once it does it will pay off. |
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Tenchi
Posts: 4561 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Innocence: GitS 2 actually only got 55 screens at its widest, and it barely broke $1 million. Spirited Away did well for the scale of its release on 171 screens, but was a flop in limited-wide release with added promotion post-Oscar, and I don't think the forthcoming DVD release was to blame as I think the casual moviegoers weren't aware that the DVD was being released. For Howl, I'm guessing you'll see a distribution somewhere between the original run of Spirited Away and the post-Oscar run, meaning 300-500 screens, which would be very good distribution for a niche film, but that's because it's brand new. As much as a handful of anime fans would like to see the Nausicaa release get that level of release, it's an older film that, unlike Bambi or Fantasia, is virtually unknown to the wider North American public (outside of the niche that likes this kind of thing) who would likely ignore the film no matter how well it's advertised and distributed.
Of course, all companies that distribute anime in North America, be it Disney, Sony, or the more traditional anime distributors like Geneon or ADV, are interested in getting more of an audience for what they distribute, but the best way to do that is with small-scale theatrical releases, small-to-medium-level DVD releases, and TV showings on speciality channels where the viewers would be more amenable to watching anime than the average American, because doing it that way is relatively safe way to ensure a return on their investments. Disney and Sony could give the anime films 3000 to 5000 screens and saturation-level publicity, and, for that matter, they could get anime series shown on primetime network television. But they won't, because they'd likely be bleeding money at the box office and lose their audience shares to other networks, since anime is not what the wider public in North America would want to watch as it's foreign and animated. They aren't going to pour tens of millions of dollars per anime film into marketing and distribution knowing that they wouldn't likely make it back because of some naive hope that they will develop an audience for the stuff with the general public so that, years in the future, there will be enough of an audience for anime films to compete with Hollywood blockbusters. That's a strategy for bankruptcy. The films that would likely only be successful with certain specific niches get much more limited distribution; it's hardly just anime. A lot of American-made, live-action Oscar hopefuls get extremely limited runs and only "expand" if they're nominated (and never break out of the niches for which they were made if they aren't nominated for anything). It's a fact of life: the films that get the mass distribution and saturation-level promotion are the sorts of films that, in one way or another, build upon the success of something that has already been tried-and-tested with the wider American public. If it was just Disney that was giving anime films (excluding the kiddy merchandising franchise stuff) these kinds of limited runs, people might have cause to complain. But both Dreamworks and Sony do the exact same thing with their theatrical releases. Like I said many times before, there's enough of a profit to be made from the anime niche to be interesting to the studios. But the people in the suits have crunched the numbers and, if they thought there was money to be made by attempting to build up a massive mainstream audience beyond the niche, they'd do just that. But they don't, not because they want to limit the potential audience for these films beyond the niche, they just determined that the potential audience for these films beyond the niche is extremely limited. "If you build it, they will come" was a nice sentiment in Field of Dreams, but it's not a profitable philosophy for a movie studio to have. Some things will just always be niche. |
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hikura
Posts: 565 |
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Barely a decade ago what was anime(japanese anime to be spefic) on american tv?Nothing more then a small "niche" market.Agreed.What happend with anime since then since companies took its chances with?It exploded to say the least.While the numbers wouldn't work as right now for movies.To use your own words,if you build it they will come.If you do not build nothing will be there and one will come.There is an extradonary chance for anime movies here in america.I never say saturation of movie but a wider audience needs to be reached which means more release.Your assuming i am asking for an immediate saturation.I never said that.I said a wider distrubtion.Get it right.If they do it properly they do not need to bleed money.I have obviously made my point and we could endlessly debate the issue so let us call it quites.
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Tenchi
Posts: 4561 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Anime wasn't niche a decade ago, it was underground and the companies that built up the fandom and serviced the niche are tiny compared to the big studios and the sort of chances they took to build up the fandom are small potatoes, relatively speaking, as they were focusing on the specific audiences of people who would likely be into it if they were properly exposed.
Now anime is coming close to hitting the ceiling in terms of how much it can grow as most of the people who would want it if they were exposed to it can get it at Walmart or Suncoast or Media Play or, in the really hick towns too small for even Walmart, off the Internet, or watch it on cable. The big studios notice that there is enough of a profit to be made from this niche to be worthwhile licensing the major films, so they license those films and release them on a scale likely to be profitable with anime fans and the small crossover audience of film buffs who take chances on all sorts of films regardless of tone or medium. There just isn't the wider potential mainstream audience for these films for it to be profitable giving these films releases wider than what Disney does for the non-back catalogue Ghibli films as the wider audience does not care for serious animation and will likely not no matter how well it's marketed, and attempts to artificially build up an audience for serious animated films much beyond the people who would already see them would likely be financial suicide for studios who have to play it safe to please their shareholders. |
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hikura
Posts: 565 |
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Off topic here.Only a decade it was defintely a underground movement.To prove a point.If you walked into any of these stores:
Walmart,Suncoast,FYE or any other major retail outlet and asked where is your japanese anime section?They would simply look at you and wonder what planet you came from.Simply outside of a few comic book retaliers you couldn't find japanese anime at all.Prior to the fall of 1994,how many shows were on american tv that were orginially japanese and airing at that time?None.Prior to 94 there was only a handful of shows that acutally aired that were japanese.As i stated in previous comments the fandom was growing but was lacking a signficant company to help release shows on to tv to give it exposure.Plus as i stated in my previous comments it took DIC and funmation(spelling on that name) to release both Sailor Moon and Dragonball to help expose japanese anime to the american public. If the market has peeked honestly do you think more and more companies would be releasing more and more anime,manga and games(that come from japan) into the market.The market has proved that it has growth potential. |
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Tenchi
Posts: 4561 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Nobody's denying that anime fandom is a fairly robust niche market, but the days of huge exponential growth for anime in the domestic market are largely over, as it is the "Disco Stu Fallacy" to suggest that the popularity of something will constantly continue to grow at the same rate.
Bandai's Jerry Chu openly acknowledges that the market is becoming saturated. Anime fandom certainly isn't going away any time soon, but it's not going to get significantly bigger than it is now because there isn't the wider adult audience for serious animation, and releasing those films in wide release would be "box office poison". |
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