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Forum - View topicNEWS: Howl's Moving Castle Box Office Results
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4547 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Was the 700+ screen count ever actually suggested by any official Disney sources? I thought it was just a rumour started by Mainichi Daily News and then repeated by a couple of other newspaper articles written mid-June as Disney hadn't announced anything about the actual screen count. |
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YourNeighborTotoro
 Posts: 90 Location: On this forum...No Duh |
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That stinks. It's good the fact Howl's Moving Castle is doing OK, but only 202 theaters
 ? I heard a lot that 'Howl's' was going into 700-800 theaters. That's not good.
EDIT: I e-mailed a person at a Ghibli site. He says that it was not announced by Disney and the newspaper that reported this "tends to print rumors and speculation". So I'm pretty sure Tenchi is right here. Last edited by YourNeighborTotoro on Mon Jun 27, 2005 7:22 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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PaRaNoidEuPhoRiA
 Posts: 12 Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA |
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I was waiting for the longest time to see this movie come out in theaters... and when it finally did, it was absolutely nowhere near where I am.
I guess they figured that it wasn't going to do very well, considering the success Princess Mononoke had. They definitely should have been a little more hopeful, though. |
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Tenchi
Posts: 4547 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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I don't think Disney considers it a failure. For an anime film released at a very crowded time of year, where smaller films will be overshadowed by the major summer "event" films, they're not expecting a huge gross at the box-office. The profits are in the sales of the DVD to the extent that the theatrical release can almost just be considered an early promotional campaign for the DVD.
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GATSU
Posts: 15574 |
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Howl's probably doing as well for itself as Crash.
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silverwings
Posts: 55 |
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Still can't believe they aren't starting this at a larger release thanks to the success of Spirited Away.
Guess all we can hope for is an Oscar win for Howl's to get it a larger release... but this year the Animation category will be very tight... |
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bluechibi
Posts: 137 |
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LOL no matter how much you sugar coat it, it's still absolutely terrible.
Kung Fu Hustle, a Hong Kong movie, not many know the director and he certainly hasn't won any oscars yet the film still managed $16,727,973 but was shown in 2,503 theatres. Yet Howl's Moving Castle only went into 202 and just made over $2million (which is nothing). So who's to blame? + | Rotten Tomatoes gives an overal critic rating of 82% / 7.4 + | Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli are well known + | Spirited Away won an Oscar + | Howl's Moving Castle is based on a popular British Childrens Book + | The movie has many celebrity voices + | The movie is being released by Disney who release such big box office winners such as The Incredibles So what went wrong? Do Americans not like foreign movies? Do Americans not like 2D animation anymore? Did Disney feel that releasing it in more than 200 wouldnt be worth it? Does Hayao Miyazaki intend his movies to be seen in the cinemas and not DVDs? Ghibli is one of the best animation studios outside of Japan, if they cant (or arent even given the chance - hey why not put it in 2000 cinema and give it the benefit of a doubt before giving up and giving it pathetic screen numbers) do better than this in America then I dont see how anyone else can.
So Tenchi do you still think that Disney are doing their absolute best promoting and trying to show all the americans such great movies as those made by Studio Ghibli? Then if that's the case why put it in only 200 theatres during a busy time with many blockbusters. Did they do this contract with Ghibli and say "look we wont cut anything but we'll give it a very small threatrical release and we'd rather use it as a way to promote the DVD instead". I'm sure they'd be really pleased with that. So is the next Ghibli film going to be in 2000+ cinemas? Okay well how about the next Ghibli? No? Okay will there ever be a Ghibli worth seeing in more than 200 cinemas? Sorry but I think this is BS, defend Disney all you like I still think they're holding them back from being bigger hits then they deserve to be, I mean come on Monster-in-law which was absolutely terrible and got terrible ratings and panned by the critics still went on and earnt many many many many many more times the figure that Spirited Away made. |
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.Sy
Posts: 1266 |
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bluechibi
Posts: 137 |
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Well I guess I dont like the idea that all animes are the same and so should be treated the same and not worth giving Howl's Moving Castle a chance because if anything I came across many people who said "I dont like anime but I thought Spirited Away was really great" so maybe it is a case that they should make an exception for Ghibli like many of these non-anime fans who loved it.
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Grico
 Posts: 201 Location: Fort Wayne, IN |
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I always thought that if Disney gave one the anime it brought over a decent mid level release (800ish screens) we could actually SEE if it would appeal to a larger audience without the larger financial risk of 2000 screens. You can say "Americans hate anime" but with no major anime movie getting any where near real screen counts its impossible to say one way or the other. If you look at modern day American cartoons half of them are anime-ized now anyway so its not like Amercian animated film goers would be SHOCKED by seeing a movie in the japanese animation style. An anime movie has never been given a good chance in the US to succeed so gauging the true market is impossible. As long as Anime is treated as small indy films the mainstream audience won't even have the chance to see it and accept or reject it.
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GATSU
Posts: 15574 |
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chibi: Kung Fu Hustle actually disappointed when it was given a wide release. Sony was promoting it as another CTHD, but, possibly because of the R rating, it made less money than Ishtar 2(I mean Sahara). But the box office it was able to get had more to do with fans of Shaolin Soccer who hated Miramaxe for burying the latter film without any support. It also helped that Ebert liked it, even though he compared it to Quentin "The plagiarist" Tarantino, which for some reason is the only way moviegoers will check out Asian films, because if Tarantino doesn't take credit for them, than the logic must be that they suck. Also, Howl's got nothing on Harry Potter. And the "celebrity" voices are big by anime standards, but still only second-tier by general audience standards. Only the arthouse crowd knew about Christian Bale before he was in Batman Begins, which is why that film disappointed as well. (That and Katie's Scientology addiction-I mean conversion-but that's another rant.) As for Di$ney, well, they've had problems marketing their own animated films to the point that most of their profits were coming from Pixar. (Although that's probably going to change with Cars.)
So what went wrong, you wonder? I'd say adapting a British book only the British are familiar with into an animated film, producing a trailer which explains nothing(same problem with Mononoke), releasing Howl too soon after Madagascar, waiting the last minute to advertise the film, when they could've established brand awareness by including the trailer on the last three R1 dvds, emphasizing the Oscar instead of Howl's success in Japan, and essentially preaching to the crowd. (That is, Disney didn't seem to feel confident selling a general audience film to a general audience, so they copped out and tried to rely solely on the fans for this one. But hey, we got our revenge by screwing up Herbie: Fully Loaded's box office.) Also, I don't think Disney doesn't care about Miyazaki anymore, considering the company needs our cash to bail them out of flops like Hidalgo. I just think they expected it to be a minor hit on name recognition alone, and so they didn't really bother establishing interest in it,or emphasizing it as counter-programming to the current crop of weak flicks flooding the box office. On a side note, Monster-in-law made money, because it made fun of J.Lo. .Sy: Disagree. The last few anime films recently released have been doing better business in limited release than their cg competitors in wide release. And of course there's the trend towards anime-"inspired" shows. It's just that companies like Geneon don't yet have the marketing muscle of Disney. But I have a feeling anime's appeal is actually expanding. It's just that companies like FUNimation license more shows than they know how to promote, and as a result, they're going to have to take more time to understand the tastes of consumers before making future purchases. |
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DragonsRevenge
 Posts: 1150 |
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Well... I saw Howls and Batman the same day, and as much as it pains me to say it, I thought BB was the better film.
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bluechibi
Posts: 137 |
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I dont think there is anything wrong in it being a British Childrens book originally (and whether only British kids know about it I dont know as it was release in the 80ies), it's not Harry Potter but it's not full of cultural references etc like Spirited Away was
Disney : "hmm I dunno if we should release Spirited Away in the cinemas I mean it's so full of cultural references that American audiences wont understand" John Lasseter : "no, that's it's charm, it would be strange even for 10 year old japanese girls too so give it a chance before just releasing it on DVD like you do all your other crappy sequel movies to all your classics created by your TV animation studio (the low quality studio)" Let me tell you something about the Disney DVDs of Ghibli movies, they are terrible, the ones like Laputa and Kiki and so on, it's cheap, it's ugly, it's nothing I would want to stick a Ghibli label on. I expected a lot more, magical enchanting movies, cheap low quality DVD release. |
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Twage
Posts: 364 Location: North Bergen, NJ |
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Here's the possibility that everyone but this fine fellow has overlooked-- maybe it's not doing so well because it's really not that great of a movie. Even the greatest masters have their misses, and I think Howl is Miyazaki's. Plus, Spirited Away got a mid-level release after its Oscar run and did mediocre business at best. The only conspiracy Disney subscribes to is a conspiracy to make as much money they can, and giving a Ghibli film a big release is just not cost-effective. Re: American tendencies. The arguments about bad publicity campaigns and too-limited releases are wearing thin at this point. It's obvious that Americans would rather see, yes, Monster-in-Law than Miyazaki movies. The reason's pretty obvious: films like the former let you turn your brain off and the latter always require quite a bit of neural activity. Seems like a basic law of moviegoing to me, if an unfortunate one. |
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bluechibi
Posts: 137 |
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I would agree with you if Disney ever did release a Ghibli movie in more than 2000 screens and did very poorly. Unfortunately they haven't despite having 3 chances.
As I mentioned before it got very good ratings and great reviews from critics, so how can it be a bad movie? It's a bad movie compared to what? Spirited Away? Maybe people ilke you and Disney, are just too busy making up excuses as to why they haven't/shouldnt give the Ghibli movies a wider release. After what Spirited Away did, they only bothered with 200??? Even British animated movies get far more screens than that. |
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