News

Weathering With You Rises Back to #2, One Piece Stampede Drops to #3

Makoto Shinkai's new film Weathering With You (Tenki no Ko) jumped back from #3 to #2 in its fifth weekend. The film sold 384,000 tickets over the weekend, and earned 532,718,500 yen (about US$5 million) from Friday to Sunday. The film has so far sold 7.17 million tickets for 9,649,049,500 yen (about US$90.5 million) since opening.

The film sold 1,159,020 tickets for 1,643,809,400 yen (about US$15.22 million) in its first three days in 358 theaters. The film ranked #1 in its opening weekend.

The film earned 28.6% more in its first three days compared to Shinkai's previous your name. film, which earned 1,277,960,000 yen (about US$12.51 million at the time) in its first three days. The Eiga.com website estimates that the Weathering With You film's earnings will surpass 10 billion yen (about US$93 million).

The film opened in 359 theaters and 448 screens in Japan on July 19.

The One Piece Stampede anime film dropped from #1 to #3 in its second weekend. The film sold 323,000 tickets over the weekend, and earned 448,572,900 (about US$4.21 million) from Friday to Sunday. The film has earned a cumulative total of 3,280,449,100 yen (about US$30.7 million).

It is the fastest Toei-distributed film to reach the three-billion-yen milestone since 2000.

The new film sold 1,254,372 tickets for 1,646,321,500 yen (about US$15.64 million) in its first four days in Japan. (That Monday was a holiday in Japan.) The film earned 8.4% more and sold 15.3% more tickets over its first four days than One Piece Film Gold, the previous franchise film. It sold 356,052 tickets on 429 screens in 352 theaters just on its opening day, the largest first-day attendance record at the Japanese box office so far in 2019. It sold 598,000 tickets for 806 million yen (about US$7.59 million) from Saturday to Sunday, or 69.7% of the total of One Piece Film Gold's first (non-holiday) weekend.

One Piece Stampede marks the anime's 20th anniversary. The first 3 million theatergoers will receive the One Piece Comic -Kan-Banpaku- manga. Fuji TV describes the film's story:

The world's greatest exposition of the pirates, by the pirates, for the pirates - the Pirates Festival. Luffy and the rest of the Straw Hat Crew receive an invitation from its host Buena Festa who is known as the Master of Festivities. They arrive to find a venue packed with glamorous pavilions and many pirates including the ones from the Worst Generation. The place is electric.

The live-action film adaptation of Norifusa Mita's Archimedes no Taisen (The Great War of Archimedes) manga rose from #8 to #7 in its fourth weekend. The film earned 95,868,700 yen (about US$899,800) from Friday to Sunday, and has earned a cumulative total of 1,589,337,800 yen (about US$14.91 million).

The film opened on July 26. The film sold 202,000 tickets and earned 265 million yen (about US$2.43 million) to rank #3 in its opening weekend in 343 theaters.

Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution (Mew Two no Gyakushū Evolution), the 22nd film in the Pokémon franchise, inched up from #9 to #8 in its sixth weekend. The film earned 73,557,300 yen (about US$690,400) from Friday to Sunday. The film has so far sold 2.16 million tickets for a cumulative total of 2,613,990,300 yen (about US$24.53 million).

The film sold 454,000 tickets to earn 553 million yen to rank #2 in its opening weekend in 367 theaters. The film earned 10.6% more in its opening weekend than last year's film Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us did in its opening weekend. (Last year's film eventually earned 3.09 billion yen (about US$28.5 million.)

The new film is a 3D CG remake of Pocket Monsters: Mewtwo no Gyakushū, the 1998 film adapted into English as Pokémon: The First Movie. The film screened at Anime Expo in July.

Dragon Quest Your Story, the Dragon Quest game franchise's first 3D CG anime film, dropped from #7 to #9 in its third weekend. The film earned 81,791,400 yen (about US$767,700) from Friday to Sunday, and the film has earned a cumulative total of 1,182,338,000 yen (about US$11.09 million).

The film sold 215,000 tickets and earned 309 million yen (about US$2.91 million) in its opening weekend in 312 theaters. The Eiga.com site projects that the film will eventually earn its initially estimated total of 1.5 billion yen (about US$14.11 million).

The film opened in Japan on August 2 on 313 screens.

Sources: Eiga.com, Kōgyō Tsūshin (link 2), comScore via KOFIC