So "How Do You Live?" OD is estimated to be ¥465M ($3.4M).

So "How Do You Live?" OD is estimated to be ¥465M ($3.4M).

Where did you get this info from? Is this pretty low compared to other Ghibli films?

It's just an estimation off the admits info from mimorin and the AEON-tracking blog.

And no, it's not low at all honestly, quite good in fact.Obviously helped by being 3-days OW instead of 2day OW but I think it's basically a lock to take the #1 ghibli opening spot, and even the 2-day will at worst rank #2.

So you're saying it might be the biggest Ghibli opening of all time?? Or you just mean it'll take the number 1 spot on the chart?

Yeah pretty much, though this is FSS instead of just satsun. But even comparing just satsun I think it's very likely it will at worst rank #2.

Wow, I'm so relieved! Amazing! I really want it to do well. I was considering travelling to Japan to see it but just couldn't afford to go from England to Japan.

So there is the possibility it might become one of the highest-grossing Miyazaki films. Interesting!.. Probably won't outgross Spirited Away unless it gets really good word of mouth. Although I read a lot of people saying it is one of his best and a masterpiece.

Very good Friday, indeed. And yes, hard to really compare it to past films since Japan is on 3-day weekends now and not 2-day weekends. It's the only Miyazaki (and Ghibli) film to open on a Friday.

It looks like it can still break ¥1 billion over just Sat/Sun too though, which is on par with past Miyazaki films (except for Howl).

~¥450m (Fri.)
~¥550m (Sat.)
~¥550m (Sun.)
~¥500m (Mon.) *Holiday*

~¥1.5b (3-day)
~¥2.0b (4-day holiday)

This would be quite excellent. Should pretty easily secure it ¥10 billion, and would put ¥15 billion in play. Just note, as we've seen several times in the past year or two, ¥15 billion remains very difficult to reach as a number of films have finished with ¥13/14 billion. So, I wouldn't expect ¥15 billion (or more) until we see a lot more numbers in the coming weeks/months.

This will be a bit of a shock to the system for advertising companies, right? I guess they'd argue that the Miyazaki name carried it.

How to much to spend on marketing a film could be up for discussion after this. Not all films can go with no marketing, it'd still have to be films with either a big name (like Miyazaki) attached to it or one with a large fanbase (like Detective Conan) I would imagine, but maybe we'll see production companies see if/where they can cut back on marketing costs*.

*I've never really hard of marketing costs making/breaking a film, and I already believe Japanese companies are on the conservative side here, but it could still be an area to look into after this.

However, marketing can also help other companies out too, like if a department store received special merch or a convenience store an exclusive drink or candy or something, so... I don't know if abandoning marketing is overall a healthy thing.

Maybe Toshiro had a point in saying movies today are leaving little to the imagination because you see so much in trailers and other visuals. Maybe too much marketing can HURT a film. Maybe less marketing can be a benefit since people will want to come out to see what a film is about with no preconceptions beforehand. I know I'm less interested in checking out Deadpool 3 because of all the reveals this past week for it. I feel like I know all the cameos and what to expect from it already.

On a pretty quick look presales for tomorrow seem quite a bit more solid than they were for today to me with some of the locations that seemed slower looking good, I think 600M+ sat will happen, maybe more

so with holiday mon I think satsun could go 1.3b+

didn't give this too much thought but just a feeling

That's another possible benefit of foregoing any marketing. A snowball effect of moviegoers growing more curious of a mystery film from WOM and such and causing the dailies to grow after opening. If everyone has already seen a trailer or some other visual, they'd have some idea in mind already about the film, whether they want to see it or not, and be less swayed by friends, family, etc. who have seen it and talk about it.

There might be more of an interest to see something they don't know anything about so they can join in on the discussion with those who have seen it now.

So far, it looks like the zero marketing strategy is having a positive effect.

It's not like they're not doing any marketing at all, just like the tweet I attached above, they paid Twitter to put an emoji after hashtags that related to How Do You Live?

Well... almost no marketing. Haha. I'm not sure if someone seeing an emoji on Twitter will persuade them to see the movie.

I actually think the amount of free publicity this has gotten is pretty wild, I've seen so many articles and interviews over this decision

They may not have directly put out information about the film, but they (and japanese outlets) absolutely did their due diligence in promoting this imo

Not sure if this is coincidentally or not, but Studio Ponoc just announced the release date of their upcoming movie "The Imaginary" on December 15, also reveal its first poster (hope they don't use just one poster to promote the movie like Ghibli LOL)


Here's the English press release
https://www.ponoc.jp/cms/wp-content/upl ... y-2023.pdf

Ponoc doesn't have the name, the prestige or the circumstance to pull it off. Any other original film tries to do this that isn't by Shinkai and *maybe* Hosoda is a surefire bomb ready to happen.

I'm a little bit sad that GKIDS, the North American distributor, choose the spoilish title "The Boy and the Heron" instead of the minimalist title "How Do You Live?". This is also the strong evidence that international distributors will have a full-course marketing instead of a single poster. I don't blame them, no company want to risk losing money by not advertising their product. It just shows how crazy Ghibli is right now.

Hoping the best for The Imaginary. Mary and the Witch's Flower didn't do "poorly", but it certainly underperformed. For Studio Ponoc to thrive, they'll need to get their films above that ¥3/4 billion mark.

I think you're right. Reservations going into Saturday do indeed look really strong.

I can see it doing ¥600/700 million today, and since Sunday will be inflated a little with the holiday Monday, not to mention there's going to be a lot of spillover from some key locations, Sunday will either be on par or higher than Saturday.

Monday might even be on par/greater than Saturday/Sunday too. It's not unusual for this holiday Monday to be the biggest day, especially if there's some family appeal since it's the first official day of summer vacation too.

~¥450 million (Fri.)
~¥600-700 million (Sat.)
~¥600-700 million (Sun.)
~¥600-700 million (Mon.) *Holiday*

~¥1.65-1.85 billion (3-Day OW)
~¥2.25-2.55 billion (4-Day Holiday)

If this happens, I'd say it's exceeded most expectations as it'd be comfortably above Miyazaki's average (when comparing just Sat/Sun) and almost comparable to Howl's opening performance if on the high end. And if the 3-day lands on the high end, then it's also comparable to the openings of like Frozen II and Suzume too.

It received the normal number of seats/showings that a bigger blockbuster receives, but it could use some more at key locations too, because some theaters are looking to be ~85-90% booked this Sat-Mon. I could see it pick up more going into the weekdays and next weekend. Many films can thrive together during the summer weeks, but I wouldn't bet on anything the rest of the summer dethroning it from the #1 spot.

Here is the Biggest OW Chart. Remember, Japan moved to 3-Day OWs from 2-Day this year. I think most know this by now, but mentioning it again just in case we get more traffic this weekend with Miyazaki's latest.

There's potential for How Do You Live? to aim for the top 10 here, and top 15 is looking close to being locked (not locked until we see more, but it's looking good).

Biggest Opening Weekends Of All Time (3-Day):

01. ¥4,623,117,450 ($43.9 million) / 3,420,493 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (Oct., 2020)
02. ¥3,146,387,340 ($23.5 million) / 2,176,407 - Detective Conan: The Black Iron Submarine (Apr., 2023)
03. ¥2,694,128,150 ($23.6 million) / 1,908,053 - Jujustu Kaisen 0 (Dec., 2021)
04. ¥2,279,300,000 ($18.7 million) / 1,625,000 - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (July, 2007) *previews incl.*
05. ¥2,218,130,800 ($20.4 million) / 1,533,054 - Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet (Apr., 2021)
06. ¥1,939,746,600 ($17.8 million) / 1,452,530 - Frozen II (Nov., 2019)
07. ¥1,938,977,200 ($15.9 million) / 1,486,413 - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (May, 2007)
08. ¥1,907,461,750 ($15.1 million) / 1,321,944 - Detective Conan: The Bride of Halloween (Apr., 2022)
09. ¥1,886,292,700 ($17.0 million) / 1,458,000 - Detective Conan: The Fist of Blue Sapphire (Apr., 2019)
10. ¥1,884,215,620 ($13.2 million) / 1,331,081 - Suzume (Nov., 2022)
11. ¥1,842,783,160 ($13.5 million) / 1,276,139 - The Super Mario Bros. Movie (Apr., 2023)
12. ¥1,787,960,000 ($15.5 million) / 544,126 - Arashi Anniversary Tour 5x20 FILM "Record of Memories" (Nov., 2021) *previews incl.*
13. ¥1,760,739,450 ($22.2 million) / 1,197,669 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (July, 2011)
14. ¥1,706,860,000 ($15.7 million) / 1,270,000 - Toy Story 4 (July, 2019)
15. ¥1,671,136,900 ($15.6 million) / 1,289,000 - Detective Conan: Zero the Enforcer (Apr., 2018)
16. ¥1,643,809,400 ($15.2 million) / 1,159,202 - Weathering With You (July, 2019)
17. ¥1,619,340,000 ($13.4 million) / 1,044,330 - Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Dec., 2015)
18. ¥1,617,174,500 ($14.4 million) / 1,058,269 - Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Dec., 2017)
19. ¥1,570,460,000 ($14.4 million) / 1,018,851 - Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Dec., 2019)
20. ¥1,548,330,900 ($13.9 million) / 1,160,000 - Code Blue (July, 2018)
21. ¥1,518,433,400 ($18.6 million) / 969,007 - Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (May, 2011)
22. ¥1,474,675,000 ($12.9 million) / 997,076 - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (July, 2018)
23. ¥1,471,934,500 ($13.0 million) / 1,000,793 - Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (Nov., 2018)
24. ¥1,467,000,000 ($13.3 million) / 957,000 - Avengers: Endgame (Apr., 2019)
25. ¥1,430,954,460 ($16.7 million) / 939,950 - Umizaru: The Last Message (Sept., 2010)
26. ¥1,396,000,000 ($12.9 million) / 960,000 - Aladdin (June, 2019)
27. ¥1,378,765,600 ($12.6 million) / 951,214 - Beauty and the Beast (Apr., 2017)
28. ¥1,367,174,950 ($11.9 million) / 900,173 - Spider-Man: No Way Home (Jan., 2022)
29. ¥1,295,123,510 ($9.7 million) / 840,487 - Jurassic World: Dominion (July, 2022)
30. ¥1,261,860,700 ($11.9 million) / 936,793 - One Piece: Stampede (Aug., 2019)
31. ¥1,176,047,100 ($14.1 million) / 961,961 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 (Nov., 2010)
32. ¥1,157,564,620 ($9.1 million) / 747,192 - Top Gun: Maverick (May, 2022)
33. ¥1,118,164,160 ($14.2 million) / 874,798 - Umizaru: Brave Hearts (July, 2012)
34. ¥1,093,932,650 ($7.9 million) / 725,000 - Kingdom II: To Distant Lands (July, 2022)
35. ¥1,055,733,460 ($8.5 million) / 685,197 - Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (Apr., 2022)
36. ¥1,050,805,000 ($9.3 million) / 824,208 - Dragon Ball Super: Broly (Dec., 2018)
37. ¥1,009,949,700 ($9.3 million) / 669,304 - Spider-Man: Far From Home (June, 2019)


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Note: If we get a weekend breakdown, I'll include 2023-Present films on the retired Opening Weekend Chart below too, just not rank them since it's not an official ranking anymore.

Biggest Opening Weekends Of All Time (2-Day) [Past-2022] - RETIRED:

It is strange that no Ghibli films appear in the top opening weekend rankings at all! Is it because they've always opened on a 2 day weekend?

Right. Most Japanese films opened on Saturday before 2018 or so, and some even did through 2022 (like One Piece Film Red which achieved the 2nd biggest 2-Day ever). You can check the retired Biggest OW (2-Day) Chart in spoiler tags to see Howl (19th), Spirited Away (48th), and Ponyo (56th) on it.

Since Japan moved to 3-day opening weekends this year though, I doubt we'll see Saturday openings anymore since Friday is included.

According to Steve Alpert's book, Suzuki chooses the foreign titles