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Japanese Box Office

TOHO announced on January 4th that in the first 44 days of its Japanese wide theatrical release (November 20th to January 2nd, inclusive), How's Moving Castle drew 10 million viewers.

Variety magazine reported that Howl's Moving Castle earned over $100 million (10.4 billion Japanese Yen) before the new year. This made Howl's Moving Castle the only Japanese movie to cross the US$100 million mark in 2004. Similarly, Spirited Away was the only movie to cross that mark in 2001.

However, Spirited Away earned its US$100 million (13 billion yen at the time) in less than 33 days. TOHO recently revised its statements regarding the success of Howl's Moving Castle, saying that they did not expect that it would break Spirited Away's overall box office record (although Howl did break Spirited Away's opening 2-day record by almost 40 percent).

The top movies in Japan this past weekend were:

This Week	Last Week	Title	Country	Week#
1	1	Howl's Moving Castle	Japan	7
2	3	The Incredibles	USA	5
3	N/A	Kung Fu Hustle	China	1
4	2	The Terminal	USA	3
5	5	Alien Vs. Predator	USA	3
6	4	Windstruck	Korea	4
7	9	Godzilla Final Wars	Japan	5
8	6	Inuyasha the Movie: Fire on the Mystic Island	Japan	2
9	7	Man On Fire	USA	3
10	8	Ima Aini Yukimasu	Japan	10