http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-07-27/japanese-box-office-july-18-19

I was wondering if anyone here had a real substantial understanding of the Japanese box office and Evangelion's appeal in Japan. I ask because looking at the numbers Evangelion 2.0 doesn't seem to be that big a money maker at the Japanese theaters even though it's outperforming the first film. The new Pokemon film opened at #2 and yet it drew over $6 million in yen. That's more than Eva 2.0 did on it's opening weekend. And this Rookies:Graduation film stands at $81 million respectively which is almost 4 times more than Eva which has dropped to 5th place.
I understand Evangelion has a large draw and is a huge success in it's home country but looking at the theatrical box office it doesn't seem like the films are that large of money makers (in the theatrical venue at least). I'm not expecting them to make Miyazaki money but in comparison, for my uneducated laymans sense it seems like the Eva films despite their hype make small scale cash. I could be wrong but to me it seems like if a Star Wars film came out in the states and made $100 million tops. Not really a success in comparison to the namebrand. On it's premier before Eva Transformers 2 made more money.

Could someone with knowledge about Eva's home nation success talk about it? I understand it has a firm hold in the geek community but does it actually have true mass appeal?

Thanks.

See also:

http://forum.evageeks.org/viewtopic.php?p=256824#256824

I thought we had a thread specific to Rebuild 2.0 in terms of box office figured. I can not finds it.

Most everyone has heard of Eva, but it doesn't seem to be super popular. At the gig that I played at in Nagoya, I was wearing the Eva shirt I bought at the theatre, everyone recognized it, but only 1 person mentioned they planned on watching it, and they hadn't seen the movie yet. That's not really an accurate cross-section, but that's like 1 in maybe 30 people that wanted to see the movie.

Part of the reason may be that it was only shown in a 100 or so theatres, whereas Transformers 2 was shown in something like 700. The theatre was pretty crowded, the first showing I tried to go to was completely sold out and there was a line out the door to get reserved seats. We waited and got seats to the earliest showing that still had seats, which was at like 7:55.

EVA was three weeks on the top until Harry Potter, three weeks, for me is a good mark for a anime 15 years old, I call it succes.

Pokemon is a kids film, that have a public assegurated, same that films how Up or Ice Age.

Rookies is a film about a baseball manga with an ongoing TV series, one of the main sports in Japan, and a succesful TV live-action series, is logic.

Also Rookies are in 428 screens, and EVA in 120...

Eva is a very hyped thing among fans, or in anime circles, but out of that, really is not a show for the masses, inclusive in Japan. Is very genre focused: anime, mecha, sci-fi, deph or confusing plot, tormented characters, seinen, really, EVA is not for the masses. If a film how that is succesful, with three weeks in the top I believe that we can congratulate us.

Star Wars in comparaison is much more light hearted.

Hm, I know all the kiddie movies would raken in a lot, but I'd expect Eva to make more money than that.

Ingrod wrote:EVA was three weeks on the top until Harry Potter

No, Eva was two weeks on the top until Gokusen. :)


I think Eva2.0 was well done for anime.

As well as young audience, there were 30s and 40s. I don't know if they are old fans or new fans from Pachinko. (Pachinko is Japanese gamble. There are Eva pachinko. There are many people discover Eva by a pachinko nowadays.)

Anyway, I think 25 billion yen is amazing for 120 screens.

Unless it's a kids or Miyazaki film, anime is still an otaku thing in Japan and not as popular in audience wide appeal as live action films. Eva is still going to be to a niche market.

Thing to remember is also budgets are hugely different when talking about Hollywood versus Japanese productions. Eva likely cost less than 15mil to make, while movie like transformers 2 had a 200 million budget. A budget for a whole anime TV series will be less than a single episode of some major prime time TV network show in America even.

DDS wrote:

Ingrod wrote:EVA was three weeks on the top until Harry Potter

No, Eva was two weeks on the top until Gokusen. :)

Yeah, I mean in the top three, but is a good result for a niche film.

In Japan anime can be otaku, but the market for that niche is not as much tiny how in europe where I live, here in spain the only animation released films are mainly kids focused hollywood products. The only anime things released here are Miyazaki works and perhaps Otomo, in few and small screens.

I know the DVD's sell really well in Japan, according to Wikipedia;By April 29, less than one week after its release, more than 219,000 copies of the film were sold, making it the best-selling DVD for the first half of 2008 in Japan.Ultimately, the "Limited Edition" release ranked as the fourth best-selling DVD in Japan in the first six months of 2008, selling an estimated 263,395 copies in that time. Amazon Japan ranked the "Equipment Edition" release as the best-selling DVD in Japa. 1.11 was also the best selling blu-ray of the year I think.
I think the movie didnt macke as much money as other films because for some unckown reason they dont realease it in more theaters.

I'm really happy a great robot movie that makes you think, managed to beat down Michael Bay's trashy entertainment.

Ornette wrote:Part of the reason may be that it was only shown in a 100 or so theatres, whereas Transformers 2 was shown in something like 700.

And yet Transformers 2 never topped Evangelion 2.0 at the Japanese box office. Did you mean 700 theaters in Japan or worldwide?

NAveryW wrote:And yet Transformers 2 never topped Evangelion 2.0 at the Japanese box office. Did you mean 700 theaters in Japan or worldwide?

It was 658 screens in Japan. I assumed the reason why Transformers made more money, in total, not just on a particular weekend, was because it ran on more screens. I'm not exactly sure how the rankings work over at Kogyo Tsushinsha.

Looks like a no-spoiler thread, so I'll mark it as such.