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Answerman - Why Can't Anime Get A Wide Theatrical Release?

L'Imperatore wrote:

Megiddo wrote: Americans at large don't care about 2D animation. Strangely enough, they did care... at least until Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

Well, we'll see what happens when My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic hits wide release theaters this October, which is not only 2-D animation, but done using Flash/Animate. (It is still computer-drawn, but in a vastly different way than the 3-D that'sprevalent in western animated film these days.)

If the MLP movie is a success, it'll probably be credited to its existing fanbase.

CR85747 wrote:

If the MLP movie is a success, it'll probably be credited to its existing fanbase.

Who else should it be credited to? Certainly there will be some non-fans who go to see it (willingly, not accompanying a fan), but it's not going to be a large percentage.

DerekL1963 wrote:

CR85747 wrote: If the MLP movie is a success, it'll probably be credited to its existing fanbase. Who else should it be credited to? Certainly there will be some non-fans who go to see it (willingly, not accompanying a fan), but it's not going to be a large percentage.

Little girls, maybe. (I don't think the fanbase is big enough to make it a success though, at least by Hollywood standards of success. It'll probably be comparable to a theoretical American Doctor Who theatrical release or, well, Serenity.)

Yeah, Serenity is the poster child for what happens when you craft a movie for a narrow fanbase. (And despite the amount of noise they create inside their bubble, that's exactly what Firefly fans (and anime fans) are.) Not a flop, but not anything you could really call a success either... It made half of it's modest take in the first weekend, and was gone without a trace within two weeks. (And basically barely broke even.) On the other hand, look at the Star Trek reboot - despite the howls of the fans, they were crafted to appeal to a wide audience and they made money by the truckload. You can see the same effect in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.

MLP... I dunno. Their target demographic is tween girls, but there's a not insignificant fandom outside of that range too. Either way, my point is that the movie is unlikely to draw in anyone who isn't already a fan (and their fanbase is huge) - unlike mass-entertainment franchises, kid's franchises rarely stray far from the reservation. They're like anime in that they're at least in part commercials for merch, and you don't sell merch by disappointing your core demographic.

Jose Cruz wrote:

@DerekL1963, Because that's the outcome not the cause. The question is "why they don't make money?".

You youself provided an anecdote as to why that is the case.

Jose Cruz wrote:

In my case I tried to make some of my coworkers to read manga by giving some manga to them. Some of them didn't try to read anything while one tried and said to me it was "weird". Anyway, I now just restrict myself to talk about manga/anime to people who are also into it. Although I only have about 3-4 offline friends who are into that.

You witnessed firsthand that most people are not really interested in something that they're not accustomed to. Manga and anime are one of those things: Though they gained a foothold in the western mainstream in the past, they don't anymore, and even during then, that moment was brief. The first two Pokémon movies came out in wide release right during that window, and the boat has left.

I wouldn't regard Your Name and Wind Rises family films, in fact it's very hard to find a Japanese "family film" in the American conception of the term. Your Name was clearly made for teenagers and young adults. While Hosoda said that Wolf Children was made for parents of small children and that film was one of the highest grossing in 2012. And Miyazaki even said that Porco Rosso was made for "tired middle aged men" and that film was the highest grossing film in Japan in the year it was released. Wind Rises is a biographical film of the contradictions of being an aero engineer whose life was made by designing killing machines used in WW2. Family films like Pixar and Disney these films are obviously not.