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Godzilla Minus One Tops Demon Slayer as #2 Japanese Film in the U.S. of All Time
posted on by Joanna Cayanan
Godzilla Minus One trails behind the 1998 anime film Pokémon: The First Movie, which earned US$85.7 million in the U.S. box office. However, Pokémon: The First Movie was released in the U.S. only in English language.
Also, the film has surpassed the US$50-million mark in the U.S. box office. As of Friday, Box Office Mojo estimates the movie's gross earning at US$50,069,917, and the film's worldwide gross earning at US$94,757,784.
The film also holds the record for the highest-earning live-action Japanese film in the U.S.
The film opened in U.S. theaters on December 1.
The film earned an estimated US$11 million in its first three days in the U.S. box office. Box Office Mojo recorded the film's opening weekend earnings at US$11,419,975. The film opened in 2,308 theaters.
Godzilla Minus One became the foreign film with the highest opening weekend in the United States in 2023, surpassing the US$10.1 million opening weekend earnings of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Swordsmith Village Arc in March.
Godzilla Minus One opened in Japan on November 3, 2023 ("Godzilla Day"), which was the anniversary of the first Godzilla film's November 3, 1954 release. The new film screened at The 2023 Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) as the closing film on November 1. The film's black-and-white version titled Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color (Godzilla -1.0/C) premiered in Japan on Friday.
The film sold 648,600 tickets for 1,041,193,460 yen (about US$6.93 million) in its first three days in the Japanese box office. The film sold 14.7% more tickets and earned 22.8% more in its first three days than the last live-action Japanese Godzilla film, Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi's Shin Godzilla, did in its first three days in 2016. As of Thursday, its 70th day of screening in Japan, the film sold 3.39 million tickets, to earn 5.21 billion yen (about US$35,964,520 million).
Ryunosuke Kamiki plays protagonist Kōichi Shikishima, and Minami Hamabe plays heroine Noriko Ōishi. (The two also lead the cast of NHK's ongoing weekday morning series Ranman.) Other cast members include Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Andō, and Kuranosuke Sasaki.
The film is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Critics Choice Awards. The winners will be announced on Sunday.
Godzilla Minus One was awarded by The Chicago Film Critics Association the Best Use of Visual Effects award on December 12, and was awarded the Best International Film by the Georgia Film Critics Association on January 6.
The film — along with The Boy and the Heron, Gran Turismo, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Suzume, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, and YOSHIKI Under the Sky — are the anime films, or films otherwise related or connected to Japanese creators or franchises, that are eligible for nomination for Best Picture for the 2024 Oscars.
Godzilla Minus One is also shortlisted for the Visual Effects category, the first time a Japanese film has made the shortlist for the Visual Effects award at the Academy Awards. The Academy will announce the final nominees on January 23, and the awards ceremony will be held on March 10.
In Japan, the film is nominated in six different categories at the 78th Mainichi Film Awards: Japanese Film Awards/Japanese Film Excellence Award, Director Award for Takashi Yamazaki, Cinematography Award for Kozo Shibasaki, Art Award for Anri Jojo, Music Award for Naoki Satō, Sound Recording Award for Hisashi Takeuchi. Winners will be announced later this month, and the award ceremony will take place in February.
Sources: Godzilla Minus One film's Twitter account via Otakomu, Crunchyroll (Daryl Harding)
