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Live-Action Bakuman Film Sells Over 1 Million Tickets in 4 Weeks
posted on by Karen Ressler
The live-action film of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's Bakuman. manga has sold more than 1 million tickets as of October 25, for a total box-office intake of over 1.3 billion yen (about US$10.8 million). The film fell from #3 to #4 on this past weekend's box office chart in its fourth week.
The movie opened in Japan on 325 screens on October 3. It sold 184,263 tickets for 251,607,900 yen (about US$2.08 million) in its opening weekend, and ranked #1 in the Japanese box office for the October 3-4 weekend. The film had sold more than 500,000 tickets after its second week in the box office on October 11, and had earned over 1 billion yen by its third week.
The film adapts Ohba and Obata's original manga about two friends who decide to become manga creators, aiming to serialize their manga in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine.
Takeru Satoh (Kamen Rider Den-O, Beck, Kanojo wa Uso o Ai Shisugiteru, Ryōmaden, Rurouni Kenshin) plays Moritaka Mashiro, a boy who aspires to be a manga artist, and Ryunosuke Kamiki (Rurouni Kenshin, Howl's Moving Castle, Summer Wars, The Secret World of Arrietty) plays his classmate and story collaborator Akito Takagi. The film follows Moritaka and Akito as they walk the path to becoming manga creators. Nana Komatsu plays the heroine Miho Azuki.
Other cast members include Kenta Kiritani (Beck, Crows Zero) as manga creator Shinta Fukuda and Hirofumi Arai (Kiki's Delivery Service, Space Brothers) as manga creator Kazuya Hiramaru
Sarutoki Minagawa (Death Note, Ashurajō no Hitomi) as assistant manga artist Takurō Nakai and Takayuki Yamada as editor Akira Hattori
Lily Franky as editor-in-chief Sasaki and Kankurō Kudō as Moritaka's late manga creator uncle Tarō Kawaguchi
Shōta Sometani (Parasyte, Himizu) as Moritaka and Akito's rival Eiji Niizuma
Hitoshi Ōne (Moteki, Koi no Uzu/The Vortex of Love) directed the film. Obata emphasized that he is not just credited as a creator of the film's concept, but also as a staff member directly involved in the production. His own art appears in the film as the various manga that Moritaka draws.
Japanese rock band Sakanaction (Kin Kyori Renai live-action film) provided the film's theme song "Shin Takarajima" (New Treasure Island). The song title comes from Osamu Tezuka's 1947 manga New Treasure Island, the artist's first published manga book volume.
Sources: Kogyo Tsushinsha, The Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web via Hachima Kikō
