I'm not sure what you mean with the first question. Last Saturday was its lowest Saturday in terms of reservations and for the day itself. Or are you trying to compare last Saturday (Dec. 5th) to the Saturday from three weeks ago (Nov. 21st)? If so, Dec. 5th was down about 30% compared to Nov. 21st in reservations.

I'll have a prediction for this weekend up here in a bit, but I'm doing a full Weekend Forecast again starting this weekend, so it'll be about an hour.

Highest Saturday Pre-Sales (2014-) [~50% of Market]

495,308 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) *1st Saturday*
404,653 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) *2nd Saturday*
260,329 - Yo-Kai Watch: It's the Secret of Birth, Nyan! (2014)
257,536 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) *3rd Saturday*
176,259 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) *5th Saturday*
170,054 - Frozen II (2019) *1st Saturday*
164,961 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) *4th Saturday*
138,795 - Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
134,713 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) *9th Saturday*
134,399 - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)
133,265 - Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
126,032 - Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
117,302 - Detective Conan: Crimson Love Letter (2017)
116,563 - Yo-Kai Watch: Great King Enma and the 5 Stories, Nyan! (2015)
114,570 - One Piece Film Gold (2016)
113,434 - Detective Conan: Zero the Enforcer (2018)
108,780 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) *7th Saturday*
106,945 - Detective Conan: The Fist of Blue Sapphire (2019)
103,969 - Frozen II (2019) *2nd Saturday*
x94,641 - Detective Conan: The Darkest Nightmare (2016)
x93,216 - Beauty and the Beast (2017) *1st Saturday*
x92,166 - Avengers: Endgame (2019)
x91,384 - Weathering With You (2019)
x88,838 - Toy Story 4 (2019)
x85,557 - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
x84,025 - Aladdin (2019)
x78,000 - Beauty and the Beast (2017) *2nd Saturday*

UMMM.... Yes, an increase is happening this weekend. This is a 224% increase in Saturday reservations versus last week (and even higher than its 7th Saturday). It won't increase that much, of course, it's not possible, but a significant increase is in store. It might get back to ¥1 billion this weekend.

Weekend Forecast will be posted in 30 mins to an hour.

So question as I'm doing the forecast: Would Demon Slayer's 9th giveaway boosted weekend coming in at or above ¥1 billion be more impressive than Frozen's 8th Golden Week boosted weekend above ¥1 billion?

Weekend Forecast (12/12-13):
01 (01) ¥950,000,000 ($9.1 million), +45%, ¥30,285,000,000 ($288.6 million), Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (Toho/Aniplex) WK9
02 (---) ¥425,000,000 ($4.1 million), 0, ¥585,000,000 ($5.6 million), New Interpretation Records of the Three Kingdoms (Toho) NEW
03 (02) ¥200,000,000 ($1.9 million), -50%, ¥1,100,000,000 ($10.5 million), Takizawa Kabuki Zero 2020: The Movie (Shochiku) WK2
04 (03) ¥190,000,000 ($1.8 million), -22%, ¥1,780,000,000 ($17.1 million), Stand By Me, Doraemon 2 (Toho) WK4
05 (---) ¥150,000,000 ($1.4 million), 0, ¥225,000,000 ($2.2 million), Tengaramon (Giggly Box) NEW
06 (04) ¥x77,000,000 ($740,000), -55%, ¥320,000,000 ($3.1 million), Fate/Grand Order - Divine Realm of the Round Table: Camelot 1 (Aniplex) WK2
07 (05) ¥x51,000,000 ($490,000), -44%, ¥280,000,000 ($2.7 million), Silent Tokyo (Toei) WK2
08 (06) ¥x41,000,000 ($395,000), -33%, ¥185,000,000 ($1.8 million), The Witches (Warner Bros.) WK2
09 (---) ¥x35,000,000 ($335,000), 0, ¥x55,000,000 ($0.5 million), Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance [4DX re-release] (Toho/Toei/Khara) NEW
10 (09) ¥x18,000,000 ($175,000), -24%, ¥395,000,000 ($3.8 million), The Legend of Hei (Aniplex/Team Joy) WK6

First Weekend Forecast in a awhile, but I'm going to begin doing them again, along with Weekend Estimates on Sundays, on a weekly basis.

Demon Slayer: Mugen Train is a bit of a shot in the dark this weekend. It has the reservations for Saturday that would normally guarantee a weekend above ¥1 billion, and I think it might get there, but again, just in case it doesn't, I'm predicting below that mark with a "safe" (LOL) 45% increase.

Takizawa Kabuki Zero 2020: The Movie is the only one I'm not very confident on since its average ticket price was greatly inflated last weekend. Its going to have a decent Saturday hold based on reservations, but I'm expecting a very large decline on Sunday. Still, a 50% decline is more of a guess than prediction.

A few days ago I was expecting about ¥600mn (a small drop of 10-15%), so a weekend at ¥950mn (and a 45% increase) would be really amazing and if it gets to ¥1Bn, that would be even more amazing

@Corpse, I have 2 questions:

Could this 9th weekend be even better than his 7th or 6th weekend?

And if the 9th weekend is so big, can we expect a big big drop next week (something like 50% / 60% drop) ? Or maybe DS will not see a very big drop and will be able to look for the record of the 10th weekend (although I think it will be hard)

For me, the most impressive is the 9th weekend helped by the gifts above ¥1Bn from Demon Slayer because the 8th weekend of Frozen was in the biggest week of the year when he achieved this record, it is obviously very good but I think that during this period it is normal to see really very big weekends.

Demon Slayer does not take advantage of any vacancy, but only gifts. That's why I find Demon Slayer's 9th weekend more impressive than Frozen's 8th weekend.

I am going to go with Frozen. Yes holidays boost are supposedly bigger and we are talking about 8th Vs 9th weekend but at this point DS is not only helped by WoM but other external factors. I think we should start thinking the other way around now. Frozen still held a weekend record against DS hurricane. Also remember Frozen built these records from its WoM alone, DS has had a lot of free additional marketing, manga, economy, local movie, more screens, IMAX.

It is already big before so people decided to invest it in marketing/ take advantage of it.... to help the economy. It is not that DS was small and people decided to marketing it to make it big.

It might. It's looking like Saturday alone is going to beat last WEEKEND, let alone last Saturday. If that happens, this weekend will likely beat its sixth and seventh weekends. Also, this will set up a possible scenario of it surpassing Spirited Away as early as Friday (Dec. 18th).

Next weekend will likely be down quite a bit, likely its biggest drop to date. It's really hard to say how much it may decline, but probably can't rule out 50% right now (60% is way too much though).

Would say 355k.

So next weekend we are going 60% drop. What a Flop.

Tried projecting Holiday period for DS

Bold Gold is Weekend.
Bold Black is Specific Holiday.
Bold Grey is Holiday.
Normal is normal day.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... ingle=true

Weekly Projections now
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... ingle=true

Indeed

I don't think anyone expected DS to do these huge of numbers before its release so I think the COVID and economy arguments have helped its run a lot. Again I am not trying to diminish the accomplishments of DS and I consider its projected 9th weekend to be a close second to 8th weekend of Frozen, plus at the rate the Saturday is going it looks like giveaways have a much bigger boost for this movie than any holiday could have given it (again as of now, we will have to look at what boost DS gets during holidays).

I'm talking about the time after its release. People saw it doing huge number and attracting so many people, so they took advantage of it, used its image to attract more customers -> help economy. But even before the movie release, I think DS is already a big name and brand in Japan, so people already did that already.

Was thinking 355k in morning but now seems like 300-320k. Not an issue I guess. If ATP is higher than last weekend, can still breach billion yen.

290?

I think it was better to have Xmas and New Year Holidays later in the run instead of having them initially. There was initial rush already there so holidays wouldn't have helped by much. Besides there were one day holiday almost every week and on top of that Giveaways keep boosting run throughout.

Now in its last legs, Holidays will be making the boost when film was coming on normal numbers.

My initial point about the additional marketing was discussing legs after its release to begin with. Just to be clear by marketing I do not mean trailers and regular means of studio publicity. Being big does not always mean you will have great legs and continue to be big, even in Japan there are cases where movies have done lesser legs than what DS has already done because they maxed our their potential over opening weekends. I will also like to be clear that I was not talking about DS's quality here because its the chicken and egg problem, the movie was good that helped it to become Japanese culture's phenom and becoming the phenom has further helped its run.

Now back to my comparison, while Frozen was also a phenomenon in its own right and had music that helped its run, DS has many more factors supporting it now in its run.

This is possibly the reason why Corpse wasn't 100% confident on his weekend predictions above 1b mark.

What do you mean here "additional marketing"?

And your point is DS got help from the economy? I think it is more right to say that the economy got help by DS. Read an article somewhere, it said that DS boosted the economy 270B yen (85B yen from manga, 50B yen from movie, more than 120B yen from other service), 50-60% Japanese economy during this pandemic time.

So DS would finish at aroung Frozen number or never cross 30B yen if there were not "many more factors" ?

You only read a few things there Alo. All the answers to your question are present in my post.

EDIT: On second thought let me reiterate. The good legs are not because of 100% new customers or repeat watch, becoming a Japanese has helped new people who would never go to movies become interested in this (the chicken and egg problem from the quality perspective). Having a phenomenal WoM and factors like COVID, more screens and positive publicity (like government officials quoting DS lines) has given it "additional marketing".

Well I can't say what it would and would not have made without this additional help, if you ask me it would have still made 30B yen but it would have taken longer specially with loosing screens because this is also the time when some of the biggest Hollywood movies are released in Japan. Having said that at this point in its run the factors supporting it are much more than any other movie which is why I used that point for comparison and feel Frozen's 8th weekend is more impressive than DS's 9th weekend touching 1B yen.

Alright, I clearly underestimated this Saturday and I'm glad I did. I don't know why I'm being conservative after everything this movie's done.

"more screens" while there has been no competition from Hollywood, local competition is still there, and it still got number of showing cut from new release. But then it proved that it still hold well despite loss of quite a number of showings and the theaters decided to let it get back some. (when Doraemon Stand by me release, -40-45% number of screens but still hold well, and in 2-3 most recent weeks, 4-5 new local releases,..)

the factors supporting it are much more than any other movie: In my op, these things only help it to balance out with the benefit from release date of other movies which it doen't have. If taking out these things, then it is really "unfair" for it, a movie release in a worst month for box office in Japan and 2.5 months away from holiday period. Example: let other movies release in October, 2.5 months away from holiday period and question if they can still pull those kind of number. (sorry, I know I'm quite too far with this kind of example, but its just for clear).