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Gundam: Hathaway Film Earns Over 2.2 Billion Yen in Japanese Box Office
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
The Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway (Kidō Senshi Gundam: Senkō no Hathaway) anime film has earned a cumulative total of 2,209,628,200 yen (about US$19.57 million) in the Japanese box office as of Sunday. The film has sold 1,088,061 tickets.
The 1982 Mobile Suit Gundam III: Encounters in Space anime film holds the record for highest Japanese box office revenue with a total of about 2.3 billion yen (about US$21 million).
The film is the first Gundam film since 1988's Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack to top the 1 billion yen mark.
The film sold 259,074 tickets for 523,943,800 yen (about US$4.77 million) in its first three days at the box office. It ranked at #3 (in terms of tickets sold) in its opening weekend.
The film opened in Japan on June 11, after previously being delayed three times. The movie was originally slated to open in Japan in July 2020, but was delayed due to COVID-19. The film was delayed in April from May 7 to May 21, and was then delayed again due to the extended state of emergency declared in Japan.
Netflix U.S. began exclusively streaming the film on July 1.
The film project will be a trilogy, and the second part has a working title of Kidō Senshi Gundam: Senkō no Hathaway: San of Bright. The film's producer Naohiro Ogata elaborated that the Japanese katakana characters "San" (サン) can be read as "sun" or "son." The film's main character Hathaway Noa is the son of the character Bright Noa. Ogata stated the second part will have some differences from Yoshiyuki Tomino's original novel series.
Sources: Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway anime's website, Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web
