News

Japan's Box Office Down 90% as Major Cities Face State of Emergency

Many Tokyo theaters were not open this past weekend, following Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike's call two weeks ago for Tokyo residents to stay at home and avoid going out on the weekends. Many theaters outside of Tokyo still operated. Tokyo, as well as six other prefectures, are now facing a declaration of a state of emergency that is planned to last a month.

The Eiga.com website states that the box office results of the week's top 10 films were down about 63% to 75% from the previous week. Box office performance was down 90% compared to the same period last year, which had such films as Doraemon the Movie: Nobita's Chronicle of the Moon Exploration, Dumbo, and Tonde Saitama.

The Psycho-Pass 3: First Inspector film stayed at #8 in the Japanese box office in its second weekend.

The film opened at #8 at the Japanese box office. The film opened in Japan on March 27 and is screening for only two weeks on 35 theaters in Japan. However, several of those theaters in the central Kanto region, including all but one theater in Tokyo, were closed during its opening weekend.

A version of the film is streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime Video inside and outside Japan. The film debuted on Amazon Prime Video in Japan on March 27.

The film concludes the story of season 3 on the case of the "Foxes" being pursued by Unit 1, the Bifrost mystery, and Arata and Kei's battle. The film has a returning cast and staff., and also has a new opening theme song titled "Synthetic Sympathy" by Who-ya Extended, the opening theme song singer for the anime.

The Psycho-Pass 3 anime premiered last October, with each of the anime's eight episodes having hour-long runtimes. The anime streamed inside and outside of Japan only on Amazon Prime Video. Naoyoshi Shiotani returned to direct the series at Production I.G, and manga creator Akira Amano returned as the original character designer.

Japanese distributors have delayed the release of such recent films as Shimajirō to Sora Tobu Fune (Shimajirō and the Flying Ship), Eiga Doraemon: Nobita no Shin Kyōryū, (Doraemon the Movie: Nobita's New Dinosaur), Gekijō-ban Ultraman Taiga: New Gene Climax (Ultraman Taiga The Movie: New Generation Climax), Eiga Precure Miracle Leap: Minna to Fushigi na 1-nichi (Everyone and the Mysterious 1 Day), Onward, Dolittle, Sonic the Hedgehog, Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel III. spring song, Harriet, Little Women, Bokutachi no Uso to Shinjitsu: Documentary of Keyakizaka46, The Dead Don't Die, Step, Vox Lux, and The Current War. They have also delayed the upcoming films Princess Principal: Crown Handler, No Time to Die, Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet, Mulan, Eiga Crayon Shin-chan Gekitotsu! Rakuga Kingdom to Hobo Yonin no Yūsha, Violet Evergarden: The Movie, A Quiet Place Part II, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, and Looking for Magical DoReMi.

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