Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Can't Anime Get A Wide Theatrical Release?
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Manwards
 Posts: 194 Location: Leicester, England |
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Being uninterested in something is not the same as hating it. Justin says, rightly, that most people just don't care about anime one way or the other. That isn't hate, it's indifference. I see it where I work: most of my colleagues are in their 50s, and they would simply never watch a film that was animated (unless it was a Pixar one), or that was in a foreign language. They have a litany of reasons, but ultimately, it boils down to "they don't want to". |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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I gave a page-long explanation of the detailed history from how we first boneheaded ourselves into thinking "2D is Dead!" from 1997-2003. (Highlights: Rugrats' success at Paramount causes studios to run cable-series movies into the ground, until "Hey Arnold" and "Powerpuff Girls" tank at the box office and the industry doesn't know why; meanwhile, everyone's so angry at Michael Eisner, they praise "Shrek" to the skies, and pile shame and abuse on "Hercules", "Treasure Planet" and "Home on the Range"'s mismarketing, while Disney's flood of cheap vidquels doesn't help the studio's image any...And analysts and media reporters never actually watch the movies, so they try to come up with industry "theories" why "Atlantis" was a mean sloppy mess and "Finding Nemo" was a juggernaut hit; Jeffrey Katzenberg came up with his usual "We couldn't make it a hit so the industry's probably dying!" alibi for Dreamworks' 2D flops, and everyone believes it.) BUUUUT, it was a tad long and needed the shorter draft, so I'm guessing the Mods pulled it for being "Off-Topic" because they personally have it in for me. Seriously. 
As for "Princess & the Frog", audiences wanted to see this before it opened: The whole point of doing a 2D animated princess musical, from the Mermaid/Aladdin directors, after the John Lasseter changeover, was just to rub it in Michael Eisner's face, after his whole "We know you hate princesses!" kick back when he lived in guilty fear of the Shrek movies. Just, y'know, it was a shame that the movie didn't seem to have any plot or likable characters, and not only that it got stuck in the December "Weekend of Death" when nobody goes to a theater, but that that just happened to be one week before "Avatar". (But hey, to be fair, everyone else thought Avatar was going to flop, and Disney quality would win out...Who knew?) |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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And because Atlantis was a mess. ("*punch* Two for flinching!") |
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H. Guderian
Posts: 1255 |
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I was hoping for more in the article to discuss "Your Name"'s reasons for a light release. I don't expect every theater needing to have it, but I feel if you've opened a movie at #1 in several large markets it'd get people thinking. Shinkai is the new Miyazaki on basis of mass-appeal.
Honestly its all speculation because we frankly won't get a boardroom retrospective on each case. I love anime and I love the niche market we have, so I don't need a wide release. Just a little bummed the most breakout 2D animated movie in years can openly to such success outside Japan in other countries, fighting for the top spot, and over in the US our version of the release will still remain a blip on the radar. Frankly if I were the Studio Execs, Your Name made such profits, I would try to promote the movie to cement the idea Japan still has a cartoon director worth noting. So when his next movie comes out the public might be all "I think I saw an ad for his last movie..." They don't seem to be playing the long game. But they are execs of major animation studios, they probably know more than I. I would like to sit in on that board meeting though. |
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Stuart Smith
 Posts: 1298 |
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I imagine those studio executives know Korea, China, and other Asian markets are more open to Japanese media than America is. Korea gets Super Sentai while America gets the Americanized Power Rangers. Just because the movie made so much money in Asian markets doesn't change the fact animation is an afterthought in America. If it doesn't involve CG animals or objects studios aren't really going to push it much. They're easily going to make more money with the latest CG flick then they will pushing an anime film. Promoting it as Japan "still" has animation worth watching is a pretty backhanded compliment and implies nothing else is worth watching. Not a strong selling point if it implies the market is in such a drought to begin with. No amount of marketing or publicity is going to make this movie a success in America. Our market flat out doesn't care about 2D animation, let alone anime. -Stuart Smith |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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The only movies to get wide release in the US are Hollywood movies. The reason is simple: US culture is inward looking actually the biggest foreign box office success in US history are these 5 children anime movies he mentioned. The reason is perhaps that kids are more open to foreign culture than adults and also due to lack of domestic competition with anime.
Notice that even Indian movies don't have wide opening in the US and India has the world's largest movie industry (by tickets sold and number of movies produced). Japan's movie industry is not that large if you measure it by number of tickets sold and no "anime" is not really niche in Japan (we had that discussion before, if 4 out of the top 5 highest grossing Japanese movies of all time are anime: it's not a niche medium there even if most anime is niche but that's because most stuff is niche in every medium). Actually Japan produces these days few great films as most of contemporary Japanese culture is manga, videogames and TV shows. The US actually is perhaps the only country in the world whose culture is considered mainstream in a large number of other countries. Well, thing is that we live in the Western world and the western cultural world is centered in the US.
Well, resistance to try something new because you don't know it, it's foreign and different from what you are used to consuming can be though as "closed mindness", "prejudice agains foreign culture (a form of xenophobia)". Anyway, even most serious western film fans are scared of anime that's not super mainstream like Miyazaki's or Kon's films. I showed Hidamari Sketch to my cousin who had watched arthouse stuff like Tarkovsky and Bresson and she started screaming that "asians are all pedophiles". I guess the fact is that trOO otaku anime is just too much for most people to handle. 
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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No, go back and look at the link I posted. The top grossing foreign movie in the United States is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with box-office receipts of $128 million. Miyazaki's films fall far behind that figure. Spirited Away comes in at a mere $10 million, while Ponyo earned $15 million. The first Pokemon movie grossed a healthy $85 million putting it ahead of the second most-successful live-action foreign film, Life is Beautiful, at $58 million. Each successive Pokemon sequel earned about half what its predecessor brought in. The first three of those films appeared on 2,500-3,000 screens. Ponyo was shown in just over 900 theaters; Spirited Away in about 700. Crouching Tiger's $128 million places it 420th on the all-time list of US box-office rankings though twelfth among films released in 2000. Last edited by yuna49 on Sat Jan 21, 2017 8:23 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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Care two disagree in two fronts. Here in Mexico (and the rest of Latinamerica) the Top Cat movie had decent ticket sales numbers, so it is an USA thing mostly. Now, let's elaborate. 1) 2D is seen as cheap. Back when pixar started, they did CGI because it was cheaper than traditional animation but since their flicks had decent entertainment even for non-kids, they now have huge budgets. Since CGI became the medium to try something new, Dreamworks did Shrek in CGI. But nobody seems to remember that many flops have been made using CGI (Final Fantasy – The Spirits Within, anyone?). 2) Hard to get into. Nowadays most anime movies are sequels/prequels to well established franchises. Most of the time they do not have a preamble (or said preamble is not meant as full explanation, just a quick refresher) and if someone is forced to watch it will probably do not understand it and therefore will not enjoy it. But let's not forget that not so long ago (from my perspective at least), fantasy was not a viable medium. Yeah, there were some movies that dabbled into the fantasy genre but surprise, surprise, they were cheap, badly written and easily forgettable. Lo and behold, a serious effort was made to create the first LotR movie. I even remember the comment from CNN anchors talking about all the money they had poured into it when no live action fantasy movie had ever been a blockbuster. After the million in revenues and the academy awards, seems like an afterthought that fantasy is not a viable medium. That is why Netflix put money in the Shanara Chronicles. Same thing happened with superheroe movies. So all we need is one easy to get great looking anime blockbuster and boom, all hollywdood studios will jump into the "me to" bandwagon faster than you can say your name 
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yuna49
Posts: 3804 |
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That movie led me to believe that the future for human actors may be more limited than we think. Kingsglaive just reinforces my belief: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htnkOpknGok The closeups of the major characters reveal little of the "uncanny valley" phenomenon. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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The uncanny valley reactions does not refer to you watching an animated movie (whether it is puppets, cgi or hand drawn), it refers to you interacting in real life with said creatures. We are used to identifying as fake everything we see on a screen (for starters it lacks depth, real depth, not the effect you get from so called 3D cinema or screens) and has a very reduced luminosity range. . |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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Oh, yeah, I remember: The photo-realistic quality of the STILL photos of the CGI characters had a lot of people talking in the industry about whether "computers would replace actors someday"... And then the movie came out. Where the characters had to talk and move, ie., move like the characters in a '00 Squaresoft game. Very quickly, the industry stopped talking about actors being "replaced", and weren't talking about it anymore. 
(It didn't help that the movie script was painfully pointless, cliche'd and boneheaded, and not even resembling the FFVII name that was supposed to pull in the fans. As if the characters weren't wooden marionettes enough.) Basically, the claims of 2D's "death" and 3D's "popularity" (yep, Dreamworks sure "popularized" Jeffrey Katzenberg out of a job, huh?  ) come from an industry that--like adults who gush over Moana, Zootopia and Pixar, but usually claim they "don't watch kiddie films"--doesn't take the time to distinguish one studio's output from another, or one film's quality from another, takes it on a "genre" level, and says that if Finding Dory is popular, well, then, CGI must be popular!--Just look at Secret Life of Pets and Sing! Yes: They're that clueless.
However, they're also stubborn about NOT appearing industry-clueless, and if they come up with a crackpot theory that the industry embraces, they'll pursue it for years until it's "proven" by some isolated example. When Princess & the Frog's flop and Tangled's hit in '09-'10 was considered "proof" that CGI Was More Popular Than 2D, it was supposed to be the final vindication for analysts trying to explain why we went to see Finding Nemo in '03, but didn't go to see the Ang Lee "Hulk" or "Terminator 3". (I remember when "Tangled" came out, starting the new 00's Disney Renaissance, some audiences seemed to remember it being in 2D, and were surprised to be reminded it was in 3D. Not because of the art style, but, they said, because it...."felt" like 2D! Meaning, it felt old-fashioned and good, like a 90's film should.) |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1113 Location: Puget Sound |
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*sigh* No. Just no. Read what you yourself quoted from Manwards. The resistance doesn't exist because anime is foreign and different. Nor is it close mindedness. Nor is it xenophobia. The resistance exists because the movies in question don't make much in the way of income. Period. How many times does this need to be repeated before it sinks in? It's all about the benjamins. |
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MoonPhase1
Posts: 492 |
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I would never ask for a wide release of an Anime movie. But is it so much to ask to at least have these movies show up in my area? Yo-Kai Watch The Movie and DBZ did, but for the most part Anime movies do not show up in my area. So then it's like having to drive 70 miles to reach a theater that does and that's honestly annoying. Even the new Yu-Gi-Oh! Movie, Sailor Moon R and some other known titles that do have a good sized fanbase are not showing in my area.
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13550 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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Even if anime movies here got much wider releases, the ones that would likely draw more people are the G- or PG-rated movies. Still, it would be nice to see anime get rated PG-13 here and have a wide enough release to make $100,000,000 at the box office.
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ignitingblue
 Posts: 14 Location: Canton |
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Japan External Trade Organization once quoted a survey conducted by Toonami or some group similar, about people's awareness of anime in United States. The result was 23% approximately. It was conducted in 2001 or 2003. I couldn't remember how the survey was conducted then, so there might be bias.
Good catch. |
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