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NEWS: Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero Film Beats Broly to Reach Top 5 All-Time Anime Films in U.S.


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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15550
PostPosted: Sun Aug 28, 2022 11:48 am Reply with quote
Nice way of spinning its second weekend drop to The Invitation. But again, at least it's not Three Thousand Years of Longing. Give that one a chance Labor Day weekend, while watching Spidey for the umpteenth time.

Last edited by GATSU on Sun Aug 28, 2022 12:48 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 4597
Location: New York
PostPosted: Sun Aug 28, 2022 12:04 pm Reply with quote
This was a brutal week for the box office in general. It’s telling the next month will have a lot of re-releases (No Way Home, Rouge One, and even the original Avatar). I’m sure Crunchyroll sees this as a win.
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BigOnAnime
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Joined: 01 Jul 2010
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Location: Minnesota, USA
PostPosted: Sun Aug 28, 2022 2:08 pm Reply with quote
Anime movies continue to be extremely front-loaded and have no legs to speak of. Most movies tend to have around 1/3 of their gross come from the opening weekend instead of half or more. BoxOfficeMojo used to display what percentage of the gross came from the opening weekend (fudge what Jeff Bezos' IMDb did almost 3 years ago) and that's what I would tend to see in the end. Some random examples.
Avatar (An example of a movie with absurd legs)
Captain Marvel
How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
John Wick 3
Shazam!

Some comparisons with ones that received regular wide releases. As you can see, all of these had harsh second weekend drops.
Demon Slayer: Mugen Train
Dragon Ball Super: Broly (Note: Opened on a Wednesday)
Jujutsu Kaisen 0
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
My Hero Academia: World Heroes Mission

It opened roughly the same as Demon Slayer, but with it falling even harder than Demon Slayer did, it's going to fail to outgross it. It's going to barely hit $40 million or fall short of that.

As for this weekend overall, this is par for the course. Late August is always horrible for box office, and next weekend Labor Day weekend is going to be even worse. It's always one of the lowest-grossing weekends every single year. September having a bunch of re-releases isn't surprising as that is another month not much comes out and it ends up being one of the lowest-grossing months of the year. The studios just don't see September as desirable. It won't be until October when the Oscar bait comes out that things will get busy again.
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Ggultra2764
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Joined: 21 Jan 2004
Posts: 3963
Location: New York state.
PostPosted: Sun Aug 28, 2022 3:51 pm Reply with quote
Looks like Pokemon: The First Movie doesn't have to worry about getting knocked off its perch anytime soon. Second weekend's down quite a bit compared to opening weekend. Still could see it further climbing up the Top 5, but iffy it can get near $50 million at this point.
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Kadmos1



Joined: 08 May 2014
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Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP
PostPosted: Sun Aug 28, 2022 4:37 pm Reply with quote
For those wondering, by global inflation the #1 grossing movie ever is "Gone With the Wind" then #2 by global inflation is "Avatar".
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Rob19ny



Joined: 13 Jun 2020
Posts: 1976
PostPosted: Sun Aug 28, 2022 5:31 pm Reply with quote
Just pass KnY in the ranking and we are good.
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KabaKabaFruit



Joined: 20 Sep 2007
Posts: 1897
Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba
PostPosted: Sun Aug 28, 2022 7:38 pm Reply with quote
The box office figures and views mean nothing in my view. The Dragon Ball franchise is still a pariah and will remain as such until Gen Fukunaga and Barry Watson get off their high horse and own up to industry loyalists for the mishandling of the property!
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BigOnAnime
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Joined: 01 Jul 2010
Posts: 1246
Location: Minnesota, USA
PostPosted: Sun Aug 28, 2022 9:37 pm Reply with quote
Kadmos1 wrote:
For those wondering, by global inflation the #1 grossing movie ever is "Gone With the Wind" then #2 by global inflation is "Avatar".
Not global, just domestic inflation. You can't adjust for global inflation.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/top_lifetime_gross_adjusted/?adjust_gross_to=2022&ref_=bo_cso_ac

How adjusting for inflation with box office works is you take the domestic gross and divide it by the average ticket price for the year it was released which gives you the estimated number of tickets sold. You then multiply that by whatever year's ticket price.

If you want to adjust worldwide grosses, it's way more complicated. You need to consider ticket prices for each market as well as exchange rates. Like when comparing the worldwide grosses for Broly vs. Super Hero, one must keep in mind that in 2019 $1=roughly 110 yen while now in 2022 $1=roughly 138 yen, so that skews the Japanese portion of the global gross (all comparisons about how it did in Japan should be done in yen, NOT US dollars). Ideally you would just try to figure out the estimated worldwide attendance. Get the estimated number of tickets sold using the formula I mentioned for each region, then add everything up.

BTW, a little bit of trivia, movie theater attendance in the United States and Canada peaked in 2002, it's been declining ever since.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190824160459/https://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/?sort=totaltickets&order=DESC&p=.htm
(Another feature that was taken away when BOM was redesigned almost 3 years ago, sigh.)
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Kadmos1



Joined: 08 May 2014
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Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP
PostPosted: Sun Aug 28, 2022 11:18 pm Reply with quote
BigOnAnime wrote:
Kadmos1 wrote:
For those wondering, by global inflation the #1 grossing movie ever is "Gone With the Wind" then #2 by global inflation is "Avatar".
Not global, just domestic inflation. You can't adjust for global inflation.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/top_lifetime_gross_adjusted/?adjust_gross_to=2022&ref_=bo_cso_ac

How adjusting for inflation with box office works is you take the domestic gross and divide it by the average ticket price for the year it was released which gives you the estimated number of tickets sold. You then multiply that by whatever year's ticket price.

If you want to adjust worldwide grosses, it's way more complicated. You need to consider ticket prices for each market as well as exchange rates. Like when comparing the worldwide grosses for Broly vs. Super Hero, one must keep in mind that in 2019 $1=roughly 110 yen while now in 2022 $1=roughly 138 yen, so that skews the Japanese portion of the global gross (all comparisons about how it did in Japan should be done in yen, NOT US dollars). Ideally you would just try to figure out the estimated worldwide attendance. Get the estimated number of tickets sold using the formula I mentioned for each region, then add everything up.

BTW, a little bit of trivia, movie theater attendance in the United States and Canada peaked in 2002, it's been declining ever since.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190824160459/https://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/?sort=totaltickets&order=DESC&p=.htm
(Another feature that was taken away when BOM was redesigned almost 3 years ago, sigh.)

O.K., maybe "global inflation" is the not the right term but my points about GWTW and "Avatar" still stand. "Titanic" is an interesting case in that it was a co-production between 2 classic movie studios: 20CF (RIP!) and Paramount. Well, from a historical standpoint, Fox and Paramount were big rivals.
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RandomCommenter



Joined: 07 Feb 2021
Posts: 44
PostPosted: Mon Aug 29, 2022 12:59 am Reply with quote
BigOnAnime wrote:
Anime movies continue to be extremely front-loaded and have no legs to speak of. Most movies tend to have around 1/3 of their gross come from the opening weekend instead of half or more. BoxOfficeMojo used to display what percentage of the gross came from the opening weekend (fudge what Jeff Bezos' IMDb did almost 3 years ago) and that's what I would tend to see in the end. Some random examples.
Avatar (An example of a movie with absurd legs)
Captain Marvel
How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
John Wick 3
Shazam!

Some comparisons with ones that received regular wide releases. As you can see, all of these had harsh second weekend drops.
Demon Slayer: Mugen Train
Dragon Ball Super: Broly (Note: Opened on a Wednesday)
Jujutsu Kaisen 0
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
My Hero Academia: World Heroes Mission

It opened roughly the same as Demon Slayer, but with it falling even harder than Demon Slayer did, it's going to fail to outgross it. It's going to barely hit $40 million or fall short of that.

As for this weekend overall, this is par for the course. Late August is always horrible for box office, and next weekend Labor Day weekend is going to be even worse. It's always one of the lowest-grossing weekends every single year. September having a bunch of re-releases isn't surprising as that is another month not much comes out and it ends up being one of the lowest-grossing months of the year. The studios just don't see September as desirable. It won't be until October when the Oscar bait comes out that things will get busy again.

That's what happens when you have a fanbase heavy film, no casual appeal. They can deliver solid weekends, but they can't leg out. Mugen Train is probably the leggiest of the bunch, and even then, that's still a pretty shitty multiplier. Most other anime films fall towards Morbius-level multipliers or worse, which is not exactly amusing.

This isn't too surprising, though. Non-original anime films tend to have a steep entry barrier, and they don't get heavily marketed heavily either (crunchyroll is a small distributor, so that's to be expected; SH even securing as many theaters as it did is surprising, and it probably only managed that due to how dead the BO is atm). The pokémon film wasn't just an extremely recognisable ip, it also had WB as its distributor in the west, and that makes a pretty big difference. Original anime films tend to have the same fate or worse in terms of distribution, but don't even have the advantage of a built-in fanbase that will show up regardless, so they're usually just DOA.

SH probably hits 35-36M or so, but I doubt it can get anything more than that. Which isn't really any better than broly adjusted for inflation (even moreso considering it's in twice or more the theaters). Just furthers the point that these films can draw the fanbases out well enough, they just can't really draw anyone else after that.
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Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
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Location: New York
PostPosted: Mon Aug 29, 2022 5:34 am Reply with quote
I'd argue Mugen Train's legs stem from a lower barrier to entry coupled by its airing on Netflix during quarantine. It was essentially the same idea as a Peaky Blinders movie going direct to theaters before airing at home, which has legs, but you kind of need to watch Peaky Blinders or in this case, Demon Slayer first.

Dragonball has been around so long that it has a massive fan base, but also that the film wasn't designed to make any new fans so much as reintroduce old ones to the material.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15550
PostPosted: Mon Aug 29, 2022 6:26 am Reply with quote
BOM says SH has grossed $68 million WW.
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thepepin



Joined: 22 Jun 2022
Posts: 69
PostPosted: Mon Aug 29, 2022 1:17 pm Reply with quote
Sigh. Everyone who loves to point out how front-loaded anime titles are that the U.S. box office because they only play to a niche keep leaving out a vital detail: anime titles get absolutely no P&A spending in the U.S.
When was the last time anyone in the U.S. saw an anime trailer on network or cable TV? Or even in theaters preceding other animated fare? Exactly. How are general audiences supposed to know these properties even exist without advertising? I could see if this was sub-only stuff: with few exceptions those don't do well in the U.S. But they are releasing dubbed versions too, except who knows this?

Now Dragon Ball in and of itself is difficult: it is an approaching 40 year old property with 4 series (Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball Super, and yes Dragon Ball GT) plus endless movies and specials. It would be difficult for people who lack a background in the series - or in general shonen tropes - to know what is going on. But good grief, why can't Crunchyroll - which is owned by Sony now - give the more self contained anime movies at least a fraction of the promotion that they dedicate to their (mostly terrible) live action fare? They could also start purchasing the American distribution rights to Makoto Shinkai, Mamoru Hosada etc. films and other standalone features from GKids - who generally dumps stuff into limited release in the U.S. without telling anybody - and give those promotional spends.

Everyone says "nothing is going to catch Pokemon." But do you know why? It is because Warner Bros extensively marketed Pokemon. Most people didn't even know that Pokemon was anime at the time! So why not do the same with other anime movies? Couldn't do worse than "Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank." Could do BETTER than "Isle of Dogs." Yes, I know that Disney did try very hard with distributing Ghibli films back in the day, including doing their level best to make people think that they were actually Disney films. The problem is that most Ghibli films, despite their (usual) excellence, lack some of the elements necessary for mainstream western success (i.e. hero's journey narratives, romance, action etc.) outside the arthouse crowd. (Yes, despite their pretensions, even indie hits like "Everything Everywhere All at Once" have those which is why they attract audiences.) But there are lots of anime films that would do a lot better than the $19 million made by "The Secret World of Arrietty" if it had the promotional budget that Disney wasted on that film.
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BigOnAnime
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Joined: 01 Jul 2010
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Location: Minnesota, USA
PostPosted: Mon Aug 29, 2022 5:57 pm Reply with quote
thepepin wrote:
Sigh. Everyone who loves to point out how front-loaded anime titles are that the U.S. box office because they only play to a niche keep leaving out a vital detail: anime titles get absolutely no P&A spending in the U.S.
When was the last time anyone in the U.S. saw an anime trailer on network or cable TV? Or even in theaters preceding other animated fare? Exactly. How are general audiences supposed to know these properties even exist without advertising? I could see if this was sub-only stuff: with few exceptions those don't do well in the U.S. But they are releasing dubbed versions too, except who knows this?
My theater on multiple movies, animated and live-action was playing the Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero trailer in the weeks leading up to the release.
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Mr. sickVisionz



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 2175
PostPosted: Mon Aug 29, 2022 6:22 pm Reply with quote
BigOnAnime wrote:

Some comparisons with ones that received regular wide releases. As you can see, all of these had harsh second weekend drops. [Lists movies with 64 to 75% drops]


That's actually not bad. Stuff like Spider-Man: No Way Home 68% ($1B+ lifetime box office) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 67% ($955M lifetime box office) had similar falls and you'd be hard pressed to say *omg no legs at all* about them. Most big movies fall off 50%+ in their second week.
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