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Shinkai's 'your name.' Tops S. Korean Box Office in 2nd Weekend

Makoto Shinkai's your name. (Kimi no Na wa.) anime film remained at #1 at the South Korean box office in its second weekend. The film sold 739,534 tickets from Friday to Sunday to earn the equivalent of US$5.23 million, 30% of the weekend total in South Korea.

The film is projected to surpass 3 million total tickets sold in the next week and overtake Studio Ghibli's Howl's Moving Castle as the highest-selling Japanese film in South Korea ever.

The film premiered in South Korea on January 4 and sold 1.18 million tickets for the equivalent of US$8.1 million in its first five days. The film topped the South Korean box office, selling 837,556 tickets during its first weekend.

The film also ranked #1 on its opening day, selling 130,000 tickets to earn 100 million yen (about US$859,000). The last time a Japanese film topped the box office in South Korea was when Howl's Moving Castle premiered in 2004. Shinkai's film opened on 555 screens in South Korea, which is a new record for a Japanese film. South Korea lifted its ban on Japanese films in 1998.

The film screened at the 18th Bucheon International Animation Film Festival in October, and won both the Special Distinction Prize and the Audience Prize for the feature film category. It is the first film of its category to win both awards.

Japanese film distributor TOHO announced on Monday that operating profit and net income for the first three quarters of the fiscal year ending on March 31, 2017 had reached record highs due to Shinkai's film. TOHO's group operating profit for the March-November period rose to 41.5 billion yen (US$363 million), a 28.7% increase from last year. The company's net profit rose 34.9% to reach 28.2 billion yen (US$247 million), and its sales rose 1.8% to 178 billion yen (US$1.56 billion). TOHO's release of Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi's live-action Shin Godzilla film also contributed to the increase.

Shinkai's film topped the box office on opening day in Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and South Korea. TOHO director of finance and accounting Toshiyuki Urai joked at a press conference in Tokyo on Monday, "We want it to run forever."

The anime film rose from #3 to #2 at the Japanese box office in its 21st weekend. As of Sunday, 143 days after it opened in Japan, the film had earned 23.23 billion yen (about US$204 million).

your name. is now the fourth highest-grossing film of all time in Japan, the second highest-grossing Japanese film, and the second highest-grossing anime film. The only Japanese film to gross higher is Spirited Away (30.8 billion yen).

The film is slated to open in 92 countries and territories, including in the United States through Funimation in the first quarter of this year.

Shinkai's latest film had topped the Japanese charts for nine straight weekends since it opened on August 26, and in its 10th weekend dropped to #2 to Death Note Light up the NEW world, before regaining the top spot in its 11th weekend, and it stayed at the top spot in its 12th and 13th weekends.

Sources: Yonhap News Agency (Shim Sun-ah), Variety (Sonia Kil), Nikkei Asian Review (Ken Moriyasu)