Several important records and achievements will be accomplished this weekend, also:

Coco, if it does claim its fourth-consecutive weekend at #1, will have remained atop the box-office for more consecutive weekends than every other Pixar film aside from Finding Nemo (five-consecutive weekends).

The Boss Baby will surpass Shrek 2 to become DreamWorks Animation's highest-grossing film in Japan.

Doraemon: Nobita's Treasure Island, the thirty-eighth entry in the franchise, already became the highest-grossing film in the series at some point over the weekdays (probably on Wednesday), but it'll be officially announced after this weekend.

The Greatest Showman will surpass The Phantom of the Opera to become the fourth highest-grossing live-action musical in the market.

When does Ready Player One open here?

April 20th.

Is it expected to do well? I saw two posters for Japan the other day. It does have loads of 80s video-game stuff so I would expect it to do well....but the Japs are so fickle about US-made stuff, who knows.

It shouldn't disappoint or bomb, but I don't see any signs that a breakout is likely to happen either. Warner Bros. is doing an effective marketing campaign from what I'm gathering, so I expect it'll have a solid/good performance. Maybe a total around ¥2.5-3 billion (~$25-30 million) or so? We'll see.

The biggest question is what demographic will this one be appealing to, exactly? I think it needs to bring in audiences from various demos, because I don't see any single demo coming out in significant numbers. The young male/adult crowd that's probably boosting it in the U.S. is well catered to in Japan already, so it's not a reliable demo for imported films to rely on.

The Japanese poster is certainly much better than the U.S. or any other I've seen, and displays the characters most likely to garner the most attention from Japanese audiences (Gundam, Kong, T-Rex, Iron Giant, and The DeLorean):

Weekend Actuals will be posted later this evening, but until then (and since I didn't get around to posting estimates yesterday)...

Coco repeated atop the box-office for a fourth-consecutive weekend (second-consecutive in admissions); Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle debuted in second place (but third place in admissions); and The Boss Baby dropped to third place (but stayed in second place in admissions). And based on the figures available so far, holds were a little stronger than I predicted.

All of the records and achievements were broken and met that I posted about a few posts back, as well. More later.

I hope TGS can hold onto screens during Golden Week and reach blockbuster milestone. Though I feel it will drop harder from next week once its out of Top 5.

Fuck yeah.

Okay that's a seriously cool poster!!

Corpse, someone on BOT is asking what Baahubali 2 made in Japan, do you know?

I'll look into it. It certainly didn't make much impact because I would have noticed it if it was near the Top 10/20 on any given day, so I'll probably have to provide an estimate unless I find an actual source. Of course, I'm sure it delivered impressive figures for an Indian movie.

Well, that was a quick search and what perfect timing as well!

https://twitter.com/rameshlaus/status/9 ... 2126709760

Unless, of course, the poster you mentioned was wanting me to either confirm or dispute this reported figure above.

$1.3 million would be about ¥140 million. I don't know how that compares to other Indian movies in the market, but it's probably very impressive considering grosses much higher don't generally go unnoticed by me.

Thanks.

Corpse do you know how many theaters Bahuballi 2 was released in? It seems that its still playing in Japan.

Ten theaters that are located in three major areas and six prefectures.

3 are in Tokyo (one of them is dropping in on April 12th).
2 are in Osaka (both are dropping it soon, one on April 13th and the other on April 17th).
2 are in Kanagawa (both TBD).
1 is in Fukushima (dropping it on April 12th).
1 is in Aichi (dropping it on April 12th).
1 is in Hyogo (TBD).

So it'll go down to six theaters going into the weekend, and five this time next week.

Cool. Thanks for the info

WOW at the Bollywood movies gross.

Hi Corpse, given Conan is looking to get 360 theaters, how many theaters actually are there in Japan? Because I thought I say somewhere prior that Star Wars gets about 700, what I thought was theaters. But if Conan has just 360, then I feel like I must be confused with something else.

Thanks

Man this schedule being put out!.

The maximum theaters a film receives has been just over 370 (373 I believe it the highest I've seen). The bigger number you're talking about, in this case 700 (though to be accurate, The Last Jedi received 937 screens), is the number of screens. The maximum number of screens tends to range between 925-975 (only The Amazing Spider-Man has broken the 1,000 barrier), and only major imported 3D/IMAX and other premium format releases that receive a dub cast can get anywhere over 900.

Just remember that a film playing in 350+ theaters on 900+ screens doesn't always result in a bigger opening, and it's especially true for a market like Japan. A film can deliver a debut just as impressive in 100 theaters on 150 screens.

Thanks for the info as always!