News
Japanese Box Office, April 11-12
posted on by Egan Loo
Crows Zero II, Takashi Miike's second prequel film to Hiroshi Takahashi's Crows fighting manga, opened at #2 on Kogyo Tsushinsha's Japanese box office chart during the April 11-12 weekend. According to Box Office Mojo, it earned the equivalent of US$5,793,542 on 314 screens. Shun Oguri (Hana Yori Dango, Gokusen, Fullmetal Alchemist: The Movie - Conqueror of Shamballa) reprises his role of high school delinquent Genji in this story set eight months after the first schoolyard-brawl film and just before Genji's graduation.
Drop, comedian Hiroshi Shinagawa's live-action adaptation of his own coming-of-age novel, stayed at #3 in its fourth weekend. It took in US$1,111,104 on 165 screens for a total of US$14,734,720. The film retells a loosely autobiographical story of how a boy was inspired by the Be-Bop-Highschool fighting manga to join a delinquent gang.
Another of Miike's films, the live-action adaptation of the Yatterman science-fiction comedy anime, dropped from #2 to #4 in its sixth weekend, but still added US$734,236 to its total of US$28,944,896 on 309 screens. The Cinema Today website corroborates these numbers and notes that the movie has been seen by over 2.5 million times and has earned 2,868,282,750 yen (about US$28.9 million) as of April 14.
Doraemon: Shin Nobita no Uchū Kaitakushi (Doraemon the Movie: Nobita's How Space Was Won, New Edition), the second anime film remake of a classic 1980-1981 Doraemon manga story that sends the title robot cat to space, dropped to #5. It garnered US$602,239 on 364 screens in its sixth weekend. It now has a gross-to-date of US$23,342,945.
Toei Animation's Precure All Stars DX: Minna Tomodachi—Kiseki no Zenin Daishūgō film fell from #5 to #6 in its fourth weekend. It earned US$487,829 on 156 screens for a gross-to-date of US$8,714,472. This film marks the fifth anniversary of the Precure magical girl franchise.
The new #1 film was John Woo's Red Cliff Part II, a retelling of part of the Chinese novel classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms that inspired other films and television projects.
Sources: Kogyo Tsushinsha
Image © 2009 Hiroshi Takahashi/Crows Zero II Production Committee
follow-up of Japanese Box Office, April 4-5
