Kicking the week off,
Eiga's Most Popular Films (3-23-10):



1. Yazima Beauty Salon The Movie: Reaching a Nevada Dream (4/29/10)
2. The Hurt Locker
3. Nine
4. Avatar
5. Sherlock Holmes
6. Pirates of the Caribbean 4 (May 2011)
7. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
8. Up in the Air
9. Alice in Wonderland (4/17/10)
10. Liar Game: The Final Stage

blue - opening this week
red - future release

Currently no openers are in the Top 10, but it's early in the week.

Corpse do you know how much is Avatar's total last week and weekend ?

Tracking seems to be very down for Alice this weekend and very very surprising for Pirates 4. Avatar seems to be tracking well still

March 20-21st, 2010

1. Doraemon: Nobita's South Sea Adventure Toho $3,052,869 3 366 $8,341 -19 $15,186,858
2. Sherlock Holmes Warner Bros Int'l $2,635,227 2 444 $5,935 -28 $11,031,728
3. Pretty Cure All Stars DX2: Light of Hope - Protect the Rainbow Jewel! TOEI $2,455,741 1 159 $15,445 0 $2,455,741
4. Avatar Fox Int'l $2,264,913 13 504 $4,494 -20 $157,651,606
5. Liar Game: The Final Stage Toho $2,039,573 3 283 $7,207 -29 $15,202,440
6. Nine Kadokawa-Herald $1,334,174 1 313 $4,263 0 $1,763,558
7. Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant Toho Towa $1,206,429 1 337 $3,580 0 $1,565,377
8. G-Force Walt Disney Int'l $1,132,095 1 352 $3,216 0 $1,132,095
9. Hurt Locker, The Broadmedia $786,133 3 85 $9,249 -1 $4,049,240
10. Percy Jackson & The Olympians: Lightning Fox Int'l $660,957 4 538 $1,229 -43 $13,088,915


Doraemon The Movie's third weekend drop is identical to last year's film, and it now holds a $5m lead after three weeks. $35m+ is still looking likely.

Sherlock Holmes's second weekend drop is helped by it being a 3day opener last week, but the drop is still excellent. $20m+ is going to happen.

Pretty Cure DX2 just kept going down with the release of more solid numbers. It's possible there was some ticket discount promotion going on since it was No.1 in admissions. Either way, it's a huge increase over last year's film.

Avatar isn't having quite the holds it had been, but it's still doing very well and has plenty left in the tank. If you give it a multiplier based off it's 13th week weekend, equal to some of the better ones during any given year, it still has $20/25m left. $175-185m or so is looking like a rough finish projection not knowing how Clash or Alice will effect it's run yet.

Liar Game: The Final Stage is keeping up with Doraemon which it opened against thanks to stronger weekdays, and having grossed $15m after three weeks, grossing approx. $5m for the week, $30m+ would be tough to miss.

All the other new releases opened to mediocre numbers.

The Hurt Locker stays flat for the week bringing it's three week total to $4m after a second expansion. It's hard to predict where it'll finish not knowing if it'll expand further and everything, but it's performance so far is excellent.

Percy Jackson has quite the hard drop in it's 4th week. $20m is more than likely out of the question now due to meh legs, but high teens is still solid.


___________________________________________________________________________________

After 13 Weeks,

Spirited Away - $199.8m ($2.4m week)
Howl's Moving Castle - $170.2m ($4m week)
Avatar - $157.7m ($5m week)
Bayside Shakedown 2 - $151.9m ($5.2m week)
Harry Potter 1 -$146.9m ($3.2m week)
Ponyo - $146.2m ($4.4m week)
Harry Potter 2 - $138.8m ($2.8 week)

Spirited Away's week gross looks odd because the $2.4m is the weekend alone, so there's some misunderstanding with the numbers there.

Top 10 USD



Top 10 Yen

Very sad about PJ. The movie should have done 100+m domestically but had bad legs. It opened well in some markets overseas but didn't get the legs to do $150+M. It will most likely end up with $135+m overseas.

You can normally tell when a film is likely to do very well when a piece of news (Cruz playing Blackbeard's daughter) results in a huge surge in searches. And the Pirates franchise was one of the only Hollywood productions that wasn't hit by the Hollywood slump which began around 2005/2006. Dead Man's Chest saw a 40% increase over Curse of the Black Pearl, and At World's End then saw a 25% increase over Dead Man's Chest.

Curse of the Black Pearl - $4.5m 2day OW ($60m total)
Dead Man's Chest - $16.7m 2day OW ($82m total), 10.2b yen
At World's End - $15.9m 3day OW ($102m total), 10.9b yen

Dead Man's Chest witnessed a huge 63% second weekend drop, while At World's End only dropped 20% it's second weekend (off a $12m 2day).

Pirates 4 should be an "easy" early call for $100m+ next summer seeing how the franchise experienced big increases with each installment despite the slump period.

Hmm, with the 3D effect and the recent slight rebound of the series, I expect the next Harry Potter to pass $100 million.

Who knows, maybe the final film can even top Prisoner of Azkaban.

what rebound. It sold less tickets than HP5. It was helped by STRONG YEN. We have to see how the currency behaves this year. But 3D should help for sure.

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire (WB) $90.49m (11.0b yen)
Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (WB) $88.36m (9.4b yen)
Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince (WB) $88.46m (8.0b yen)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II should be a lock for $100m being the final film. As for Part I, I'm not sold on it grossing $100m quite yet. Certainly possible though.

March 28-29th, Admission Rankings:

1 Pretty Cure All Stars DX2: Light of Hope - Protect the Rainbow Jewel! 2
2 Doraemon: Nobita's South Sea Adventure 4
3 Liar Game: The Final Stage 4
4 Sherlock Holmes 3
5 Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant 2
6 Nine 2
7 G-Force 2

The exact same order as last weekend, the only difference being Liar Game had more admissions this time than Sherlock Holmes.

And last week Pretty Cure DX2 was No.1 in admissions, but finished No.3 in rankings. This could be due to discount ticket promotion (though they normally last for a week or two at the most), so it's probably not going to be No.1 in Rankings tomorrow. So that means the 30th film in the Doraemon series is once again going to be No.1 unless it saw a huge drop.

Doesn't appear to be an exciting weekend, but next week there's a few openers that should do well

So far 2010 has only had two different No.1 films (rankings, not admissions), Avatar and Doraemon.

March 27-28th, Rankings:

1 1 Doraemon The Movie: Nobita's Mermaid Legend Toho 4
2 3 Pretty Cure All Stars DX 2 Ray of Hope Save the Rainbow Jewel Toei 2
3 2 Sherlock Holmes WB 3
4 5 Liar Game The Final Stage Toho 4
5 4 Avatar FOX 14
6 7 Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant Toho Towa 2
7 6 Nine Kadokawa/Shochiku 2
8 8 G-Force Disney 2
9 9 The Hurt Locker Broadmedia Studio 4
10 NEW Memoirs Of A Teenage Amnesiac Toei 1
11 10 Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief FOX 5

As I thought, Pretty Cure falls behind again in the rankings despite leading admissions two weeks in a row. Doraemon tops for the 4th weekend in a row, which is a record for the series this decade. Not sure if it's the most overall, impossible to find much info from the 70's-90's.

Doraemon should be around $19m (1.87m admissions) after 4 weeks.
Pretty Cure close to $7m (560,000+ admissions).
Avatar around $160m with a total exceeding 14.6b yen.
Liar Game around $18m (1.4m admissions).

Kicking off the week, Eiga's Most Popular Films:

1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
2. Land of the Lost
3. Nine
4. The Hurt Locker
5. Avatar
6. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
7. Sherlock Holmes
8. Pirates of the Caribbean 4
9. Memoirs Of A Teenage Amnesiac
10. The Spirit

I'm not sure why Transformers 2 and Land of the Lost are here. Neither were popular. Transformers 2 saw a sharp drop from Transformers, and Land of the Lost opened at No.15 and didn't even finish close to $1m. Avatar presales, 2012, Michael Jackson, and the Pirate of the Caribbean films are dominating the DVD charts, so I'm sure both Transformers 2 and Land of the Lost are already out on DVD as well... And I don't see any recent news articles about them that could have caused a surge in searches. My only guess is the Razzies (which there is an article about it last week) have something to do with it, though they've been announced for what, a month?

Anyway, the only opener which will do well looks to be Solanin (No.11 on Eiga right now). So Doraemon will likely stay on top for another week.

http://boxofficemojo.com/intl/japan/?yr ... =13&p=.htm


According to BOM, Avatar is back at #2 with a $164,916,593 total now. Great hold.

BOM has been 2/3m higher than other sites that match though with the total, and with many mistakes on other films, I'm cautious about using them for INTL numbers. Do they list where they get their info like Variety and THR do?

March 27-28th, 2010

1. Doraemon: Nobita's South Sea Adventure Toho $2,453,305 4 366 $6,703 -20 $21,822,951
2. Avatar Fox Int'l $1,766,702 14 478 $3,696 -22 $159,643,309
3. Sherlock Holmes Warner Bros Int'l $1,760,572 3 447 $3,939 -33 $15,848,672
4. Pretty Cure All Stars DX2: Light of Hope - Protect the Rainbow Jewel! TOEI $1,566,068 2 160 $9,788 -36 $6,516,282
5. Liar Game: The Final Stage Toho $1,365,542 4 283 $4,825 -33 $19,174,312
6. Nine Kadokawa-Herald $746,210 2 314 $2,376 -44 $4,396,770
7. G-Force Walt Disney Int'l $734,810 2 353 $2,082 -35 $3,461,312
8. Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant Toho Towa $725,473 2 337 $2,153 -40 $4,031,527
9. Hurt Locker, The Broadmedia $588,380 4 108 $5,448 -25 $5,522,962
10. Memoirs of aTeenage Amnesiac TOEI $529,204 1 247 $2,143 0 $529,204


Very good for Doraemon. It's almost at the total of last year's film after 4 weeks. $35m+ seems assured. 4 weeks at No.1, and it'll likely make it to 5 since nothing big is opening this weekend.

Avatar sees another strong hold, though with the DVD release (date) announcement (DVD, CD, etc. announcements hurt sales in Japan, CD's for example aren't even given a date until a few weeks before release to keep the singles in release selling, and Avatar's pre-sales have made it No.1 already), it's probably going to lose some steam as it did this week a little. A bit silly to release the DVD so soon. $175-$185 still looks like the range for the total. April 17th-23rd will decide it's total since it'll lose about all of it's screens since 380 of it's 478 screens are 3D to Alice and Clash.

Sherlock Holmles is having an impressive run so far. Normally a total in the low 20's would have resulted in it's opening weekend, but the legs have been a bit stronger and it should finish with around $25m.

Not bad for Pretty Cure DX2. Admissions are the highest again this weekend, but discount ticket sales are keeping it a bit below the other films so far.

Liar Game finally falls a bit behind Doraemon which it had been running even with. Not unexpected though. Should be looking at a total around $30m.


___________________________________________________________________________________

After 14 Weeks,

Spirited Away - $204m ($4.2m week)
Howl's Moving Castle - $172.6m ($2.4m week)
Avatar - $159.6m ($2m week)
Bayside Shakedown 2 - $153.1m ($1.2m week)
Ponyo - $149.1m ($2.9m week)
Harry Potter 1 -$148.7m ($1.8m week)
Harry Potter 2 - $140.5m ($1.7m week)
Titanic - $101.4m


Top 10 USD



Top 10 Yen

It made over $1.7m on the weekend but only $2m for the whole week? That can't be right...

It's one of those weird numbers. Week 13 for Spirited Away for example was $2.4m, but $2.4m was it's weekend total alone. It's annoying, especially when you see a film's total decreasing week after week. BOM had Spirited Away go from $229, $230, $232, then suddenly decreasing until it was at $229m again in it's 36th week I think. And there's other examples. BOM has Ponyo's total go up 10m in Week 16 off a 300k weekend. BOM has the most "errors", but Variety and THR have a few at times also. But there's nothing to be done about it when using converted numbers.

Japanese sites, such as Eiga, umedatoto, all say it hit 14.68b yen though, which is about $160m. So the total itself looks right. For the total though, I'll start putting both the BOM and Variety/THR after the weekend gross.

April release schedule:

April 3rd:
Solanin
Rhapsody Kidnapping
A Piece of Our Life
Looking Up at the Half-Moon


April 9th:
Shutter Island


April 10th:
District 9
My Darling is a Foreigner
A Dangerous Man
Umi no Kingyo


April 17th (huge weekend):
Nodame Cantabile The Movie Final Score Part II
Alice in Wonderland
Detective Conan The Movie: Lost Sky Ship
Crayon Shin-chan The Movie: Super Dimension
Sniper
An Education


April 23rd:
Wolfman
Clash of the Titans


April 24th:
Gitama: The Movie
Bushido 16
Righteous Kill
Precious
Teidakankan
Phase 6
Fanboys


April 28th:
Giulia non esce la sera
Solo un padre


April 29th (Golden Week begins):
Yazima Beauty Salon The Movie
Arthur et la Vengeance de Maltazard
Vincere



Starting the 17th, the end of April is going to be quite huge. April 17-18th will be especially huge. Alice should take the weekend (could open to $10m) topping Nodame Cantabile Part II, but could lose in final total. I'm going to give it to Alice though considering what Avatar is doing (ranking No.2 despite being out of the Top 10 in admissions) all around. And Detective Conan usually opens around $5m or so and finish with like $30m. But if Doraemon is any indication, we could see a sizable increase. Conan is normally bigger than Doraemon each year. So the combined openings of the Top 3 will likely be over $20m. That weekend is also going to cause some of the current strong holdovers crashing.

April 3-4, 2010


Rankings:

1 1 Doraemon The Movie: South Sea Adventure Toho 5
2 3 Sherlock Holmes WB 4
3 4 Pretty Cure All Stars DX2: Light of Hope - Protect the Rainbow Jewel! TOEI 3
4 5 Liar Game: The Final Stage Toho 5
5 2 Avatar FOX 15
6 - Solanin Asmik Ace 1
7 8 Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant Toho/Towa 3
8 7 G-Force Disney 3
9 6 Nine Kadokawa-Herald 3
10 9 The Hurt Locker Broadmedia 5

Doraemon tops again for a 5th week, with a gross that has exceeded 2.7b, so the total should be close to $28m or so. If that's the case, then $40m is definitely in play.

Liar Game reaches 2b yen, or about $22m. Still looking good for $30m+.

Avatar hits 15b yen, which is about $161/$162m. Note though that the exchange rate is hurting it at the moment. This probably explains the recent differences between Variety/THR vs BOM. And Avatar was estimated to finish 5th last weekend too, so it's probably safe to assume it'll be higher when numbers come in on Wednesday.

I'm not sure what Solanin opened to, but a 6th place debut is very solid on 108 screens.




Admissions:

1 1 Pretty Cure All Stars DX2: Light of Hope - Protect the Rainbow Jewel!
2 2 Doraemon The Movie: Nobita's South Sea Adventure
3 3 Liar Game: The Final Stage
4 4 Sherlock Holmes
5 5 Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
6 6 Nine
7 7 G-Force

Doraemon hits 2.5m admissions
Liar Game - 1.73m admissions




Not much going on at the Box Office the past few weeks, but it's the calm before the storm which arrives on April 17th when Nodame Cantabile Part II, Alice in Wonderland, and Detective Conan all open on the same day.

Starting the week, here are...

Eiga's Most Popular Films (4/5):

1. Zebraman 2: The City Strikes Back - May 1st
2. Solanin
3. Shutter Island - April 9th
4. The Hurt Locker
5. Nine
6. District 9 - April 10th
7. Alice in Wonderland - April 17th
8. Sherlock Holmes
9. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
10. Avatar
11. Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
12. Liar Game: The Final Stage
13. Nodame Cantabile Part II - April 17th
14. Moon - April 10th
15. Clash of the Titans (2010) - April 23rd
16. My Darling is a Foreigner - April 10th
17. Pirates of the Caribbean 4 - May 2011
18. Nodame Cantabile Part I
19. Up in the Air
20. Bushido 16 - April 24th

opening this week
future release

I wonder how Shutter Island will do. Gangs of New York did well in Japan, but the following two Scorsese/DiCaprio films did meh numbers.

I think it's going to do pretty well. The Departed grossed 1.56b yen, which would have been something like $14m in 2007. If Shutter Island grossed about the same, 1.56b yen, it would be close to a $17m total today.

2007's Top Foriegn Films:



The release patterns will be quite different though. The Departed only opened on 61 screens, but it debuted at No.1 with $2.4m according to BOM. And since it was released in Japan a few weeks before the Oscars, it was going to be expanded and likely have strong legs one would think. But the opposite happened. It added 300 screens it's second weekend, but ended up dropping 36%. Then all the following drops were similar. So it kinda fell apart. It could have been expanded too wide, too soon though. 61 to 361 is a huge sudden increase in screens.

Shutter Island will likely be in medium release, and I could see it opening close to $4m over it's 3day weekend, which should mean $20m could be in reach. Though being closer to Golden Week, many films will be released in the coming weeks so competition for screens might become tough and could limit the run a bit.

http://boxofficemojo.com/intl/japan/?yr ... =14&p=.htm

Hehehe, Avatar's gross dropped by $4 million compared to last week, despite adding over $1.3 million this weekend. At this pace, it'll end up with less than $100 million eventually

However, now that I look at this....Avatar seems to be the only one that lost quite a bit

http://boxofficemojo.com/intl/japan/?yr ... =13&p=.htm

What gives?!