I put together a nifty little list of some of the biggest films this year (I didn't included HP6 because there's no way of knowing what it made after 10 days because it opened on a wednesday). Finished with $93m though.

If I can, I'll include Avatar (it'll be hard though with the wednesday opening).

Totals after 10 Days in Release:

Rookies The Movie - $33.6m
--Rookies was the biggest film of the year ($99m total), pulling in over $10m in it's second weekend, something only a few films manage a year in their first.
One Piece Strong World - $24.5-24.9m approx.
--In just 188 theatres, it opened higher than Ponyo (450+ theatres) and HP6 (over 800 theatres) and is in it's 2nd week now. It should be a bit more frontloaded than usual films since there was a tie-in to the first viewers, but a total over $50m seems a no brainer. The studio expect 57m, but that seems a little low to me.
This Is It - $23.4m
--Opened with a boom (over $10m) and kept holding well every week to finish with $40m. It would have crossed $50m easily if it had more than 4 weeks of release.
20th Century Boys Chapter III - $22.9m
--The final chapter opened to almost $10m and has finished just above $50m.
Red Cliff Part II - $21.8m
--Great legs lead Red Cliff II to a total near $60m.
2012 - $18.7
--Had a pretty standard opening for a big hollywood film, but has had pretty good legs and looks to finish with around $40m.
Pokemon the 12th Movie - $18.4m
--Didn't open quite as high as past Pokemon films, but still went on to finish with $50m.
Up - $17.4m
--Great opening, 50% higher than Wall-E which finished around $50m. Should be headed for $60m (way more competition than Wall-E had) if it holds as well as it has been. 4.4m in it's 3rd weekend matching Wall-E's first.
Evangelion 2.0 - $16m
--Was only in 120 theatres, but pulled in massive PTA's to finish north of $40m.


Blue - Still in theaters.


For the curious (all two of you :-p), the three biggest films last year after 10 days:

Ponyo - $30.4m
--Went on to finish with $172m after 2 months at No.1.
Boys over Flowers -$24.7m
--Finished with $87m.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - $25m
--Finished with $63.4, pretty frontloaded when your opening is over 50% of your 10 day total, which was the case here.

I forgot This Is It had a 5-day opening (10.4), not a 2-day (5.7) in the 10 day totals in the above post I made.


With the year coming to an end, here are the best 2-day openings of 2009.

Top 10 Openings of 2009

1. May - Rookies: The Movie - $12,902,184, 428 screens, $30,145 PTA
2. December - One Piece: Strong World - $11,692,830, 188 screens, $62,196 PTA
3. July - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - $10,488,890 (5-day was $18.7m), 844 screens, $12,428 PTA
4. June - Terminator Salvation - $10,383,006, 697 screens, $14,897 PTA
5. August - Twentieth Century Boys - Chapter III - $9,419,726, 374 screens, $25,186 PTA
6. July - Pokemon the 12th Movie - $7,139,306, 366 screens, $19,506 PTA
7. November - 2012 - $7,025,536, 610 screens, $11,517 PTA
8. December - Up - $6,992,874, 663 screens, $10,547 PTA
9. February - Twentieth Century Boys - Chapter II - $6,955,472, 374 screens, $18,598 PTA
10. April - Red Cliff II - $6,693,851 (3-day was $8.7m), 729 screens, $9,182 PTA

Avatar is a 5-Day opener, and on this list only HP6 is a 5-day opener. Red Cliff II was a 3-day ($8.7). I think it can make it on here though. There is a big gap between films 5 and 6.

An interesting note: Rookies second weekend, $10,666,002, would be good enough for 3rd.

Also, I just noticed how hard Terminator fell after it opened. It barely got a 3 multiplier which just flat out sucks in Japan. -64% in it's second weekend (insane drop).

If Terminator: Salvation could make $10+ million 2-day in Japan...then Avatar should be able to do $20+ million 5-day.

That'd be more than HP6 though, and double This Is It. I'm sure it'll do very well, but the opening shouldn't reach those heights (I don't think, could be very wrong), the legs will be better than Harry Potter.. The opening day will give us a good idea where it'll go.

Terminator is also a popular series in Japan. The 3rd film grossed almost $70m there. So it seems all the fans turned up for the opening, saw it was horrid, then never came back. 10/32 is terrible legs.

Another note, I think that weekend Terminator opened might have been a holiday week. Which would explain Rookies stellar 2nd weekend.

Just read that Avatar's opening day is The Emperor's Birthday, which has been a public holiday since 1868. Good move to wait a week to release it.

http://eiga.com/official/avatar/

The article talks about previous James Cameron films and what they have done for the film industry, then goes on to talk more about Avatar itself (describing a scene that sound really interesting to me, mountains colliding, hehe), I wanna see this carnivorous animal with tusks it's talking about too. And the most important bit talks about how it's an "experience" movie, and quote "bringing the sense of reality that oneself has into the world of the movie". This is important because movie-goers in Japan are very picky (or at least, aren't willing to see just anything), and as I've mentioned before the average joe only sees 1/2 films a year in theatres. I read an article how difficult it is for young studios and original films to find an audience. Movie-goers want to know what to expect (the top movies are almost always Ghibli, Tv Drama Adaptations have become huge over the past few years, Manga/Anime films, sequels, very few original films break out) before paying nearly $20 USD (normal ticket price, 3D is probably near $30 USD) to watch the movie. The "experience" factor the article goes over is the biggest possible selling point for the film.

It then goes on to talk about 3D, mentioning how it was popular in the 50's (really?) and 80's. Later it talks about how Cameron loves new technology, especially "liquid expressions", bringing up the Abyss and the T-1000 in Terminator 2, then just mentions motion capture.

The article ends talking about how the future of Hollywood films is 3D, and how it'll be the driving force behind them, mentioning some releases coming up (Alice in Wonderland in April, which is getting good hits on this site btw, Biohazard something, and Pirates of the Caribbean 4, which I didn't know was confirmed for 3D yet), and how Avatar is opening the curtain for the future of 3D.

eeks. pirates in 3d would bomb. it has some of the fugliest folks around. it would be like a horror film.

Avatar sure is getting alot of promotion, tie-ins, etc.





Might just make a few on the fence moviegoers attend.

http://eiga.com/buzz/20091223/5/

About $4.4m from 831 screens. Impressive, but not huge. It happened to open on a public holiday, so the number is of course going to be inflated.

For example the recent big hit One Piece: On the first day, the film made 553 million yen (US$6.24 million), and it made 485 million yen (US$5.47 million) on the second day on 188 screens.

It's an encouraging start for sure though. I'll try to find HP6's opening day.

I think people were saying that it was about $3.5m?

It was 3.57m, this makes Avatar's opening day very impressive now since they were both Wednesday openers.

The only bad news I see is that HP6 opened on Ladies' Day, where women pay half price, and according to Variety, they made up for more than 50% of HP6's audience. While Avatar had sort of the opposite, opening on a holiday. We'll see how it plays out, but very impressive start for Avatar. So one's OD was deflated, while the others was inflated.

Well you can assume Avatar and Hp6 opened the same..

Hp6 got 83 million.

So Avatar is sitting pretty.

93m actually, BOM isn't worth checking for INTL numbers anymore.

And this is great news for Avatar, a total north of 70/80 seems assured I'd think, even if it might be a little more frontloaded in the beginning than HP6 given the complete opposite days they opened. Avatar would have better legs in the long run, so 100m is certainly a possibility.

So Avatar still has a shot at 100 million then?

Well, Hollywood films don't have the legs like they used to, 5/10 years ago a 5-day that HP6 opened to (18m) would have meant a 100m+ total easily, and Indy's 13m 2-day would have meant an easy 100m (finished with 63m, very poor legs). They have become the most frontloaded films. They hit an all time low this year with Terminator 4, 10m 2-day, 32m finish. Just awful legs, and way over a 50% drop from Terminator 3.

But 100m is definitely possible. I'm sure it's being well received.

Dec. 19-20th

1. One Piece Film: Strong World TOEI $4,747,158 2 191 $24,854 -59 $24,901,704
2. Nodame Cantabile: The Final Score - Part I Toho $4,364,808 1 409 $10,672 0 $4,364,808
3. Up Walt Disney Int'l $4,038,915 3 661 $6,110 -31 $24,671,421
4. Kamen Rider × Kamen Rider Double & Decade: Movie War2010 TOEI $2,060,193 2 293 $7,031 -60 $8,376,765
5. 2012 Sony Int'l $1,242,753 5 583 $2,132 -41 $33,664,973
6. Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva Toho $1,031,505 1 311 $3,317 0 $1,031,505
7. Fourth Kind, The Warner Bros Int'l $932,733 1 236 $3,952 0 $1,221,263
8. Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend The Movie Warner Bros Int'l $905,257 2 135 $6,706 -47 $2,989,901
9. Public Enemies TOWA $882,907 2 326 $2,708 -47 $4,221,268
10. Michael Jackson's This Is It Sony Int'l $714,009 8 114 $6,263 0 $49,345,396



Very interesting, I thought This Is It had been pulled because it suddenly disappeared from the Top 10 after being 3rd it's 4th week, but now it's back and it's total is almost $10m higher than when it disappeared ($40m).

Some pretty harsh drops all around for the holdovers. Even up dropped double what it did last weekend, not bad, but a steep drop nonetheless. A gross much higher than Wall-E no longer looks very good, but still, it's a hit. One Piece (becomes Toei's fastest film to 2.25 billion yen) and Kamen Rider both drop big, especially Kamen Rider, it only brought in just above 1m over the weekdays and then drops 60% adding only 3.3m to it's opening weekend of 5m, yikes.

Maybe this week is weak in Japan in general seeing the 40%+ drops for the others, and what appears to be weak weekdays.

Depends on how Avatar affects it, I'd say. It's 3rd weekend gross/cume is still running a fair bit ahead of Wall-E at the same point:

$4,038,915 (-31.0%) - $24,671,421
vs.
$2,752,788 (-38.7%) - $17,140,690

And yes Up still had by far the best hold in the Top 10.

That makes it look better, and Up's third weekend isn't too far from Wall-E's first either (4.8m).

And This Is It hit 5 billion yen, very impressive. It's gonna be a Top 5 contender this year.

Wall-E vs Up

Wall-E:
1. WALL-E Walt Disney Int'l $4,850,736 1 458 $10,591 0 $5,538,163 (3-day/or previews opening I guess)
1. WALL-E Walt Disney Int'l $4,493,479 2 459 $9,790 -7 $12,650,027
2. WALL-E Walt Disney Int'l $2,873,238 3 454 $6,329 -36 $17,890,694
1. WALL-E Walt Disney Int'l $2,090,971 4 456 $4,585 -27 $24,339,672
1. WALL-E Walt Disney Int'l $3,188,888 5 456 $6,993 53 $33,011,500
1. WALL-E Walt Disney Int'l $1,829,462 6 449 $4,075 -43 $38,345,676
2. WALL-E Walt Disney Int'l $1,005,204 7 392 $2,564 -45 $40,774,019
No data for week 8
10. WALL-E Walt Disney Int'l $474,775 9 278 $1,708 -32 $43,322,327

This is where weekend data ends completely, however, I'm pretty sure I read it hit the 5 billion yen mark, meaning a total around $50m, but maybe an average of 43.3 and 50 and we'll say a total of 46.5m for Wall-E for this.

Up:

1. Up Walt Disney Int'l $6,992,874 1 663 $10,547 0 $6,992,874
2. Up Walt Disney Int'l $5,886,910 2 664 $8,866 -16 $17,398,410
3. Up Walt Disney Int'l $4,038,915 3 661 $6,110 -31 $24,671,421


There's a lot more competition this December than last year. Wall-E remaining in the Top 2 for so long with numbers that would mean a mid top 10 rankings the past few weeks.

Here's some interesting new (sorry, not Avatar's thursday or friday gross yet): http://eiga.com/buzz/20091225/16/

Evangelion 2.0 was released on only 120 screens (about 1/3 of what bigger local films get, and 1/6 of Hollywood films) last June and opened with a PTA of almost 45,000 (OD exceeded 270 million yen, 2-day of 500 million yen, or $5.37m), and went on to gross 4 billion yen (it's total was around $42/43m) without ever expanding. And according to this article, if I'm right *waits for ANN*, it's going to be re-released on 50 screens on New Years day only and will include some additional footage. They added Destruction to the title of the film, and the re-release has something to do with 2009 being a significant year for the series, or 9 in general, not sure.

I could see the New Years day being significant, adding something around $2m to the total (which would probably keep it in the Top 10 of 2009 if it's not in or is borderline; there were several films this year around that 4 billion yen mark).

So, how well has the Ultraman movie performed? I just find it weird that it wasn't released in as many theaters as I expected considering how iconic the franchise is.

The franchise is well known (I think it debuted in the 60's didn't it?), but the films don't seem to do big business. 135 screens is a little low, but it's ok. Screen counts matter very little in Japan. A film released on 100 screens can outgross one released on 600. What's the chances of a film in the states released on 500 screens (never expanding) outgrossing one released on 3000? Yeah. The highest grossing Ultaman film to my knowledge was the current one's predecessor which gross about 1 billion yen, so last year something around 9/10m USD.

The new one opened well enough, debuting at No.5 two weeks ago in what is a big December right now. Weekdays last weekend though look weak to me. I don't know if that's normal this time of year or what happened though, and then the drops over the weekend were pretty large all around (unusual that it and all the other openers from two weeks ago, except One Piece which made almost $10m during the weekdays vs it's <$5m second weekend, failed to double their 2-day over the past 7 days). The film itself though seems to have been received well enough, on Eiga it has a 4.3/5 average, which is a tad low on the site, but still solid.

Did you find this thread/site on google? Asking because when I do research now this thread is usually near the top, if not at the top, of the rankings.

And if you want to track it, here:

5. Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend The Movie Warner Bros Int'l $1,698,375 1 135 $12,581 0 $1,698,375
8. Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend The Movie Warner Bros Int'l $905,257 2 135 $6,706 -47 $2,989,901

Though it may be hard following it once it leaves the Top 10 until yearly figures are released, unfortunately. I see something close to $10m though because of what I'm almost positive was a deflated week 2 all around.