Anime movies and money

toot · Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 3:27 pm Post subject: Anime movies and money

There's been lots of posts and news lately because of the 3 big movies getting released this fall, GITS, Steamboy, and Howls Moving Castle. something caught my attention that doesnt make sense to me.
The Wired article Is submitted said steamboy cost $22 million and is the most expensive anime made to date. $22m seems like pocket change for movies these days. i thought the stuff coming out of dreamworks, pixar, etc cost at least twice that. And then i found that according to the Japan top 10 box office lists at ANN (and other places), Steamboy made about $8M total earnings before it dropped out of the top 10. How can a movie that was in the top 10 for more than a month make less than $10M? Lord of the rings: the 2 towers grossed almost $1 billion worldwide. Even average movies in the US make more than $8M their first week or 2.

If both articles are correct, it looks like Steamboy might lose money. How is that possible?

Nastee · Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 4:52 pm Post subject:

Don't know. If it was in the top 10 for a month there is no way in had only 8 mil. It's just impossible. That makes roughly 2 mil. a week and with that sum of money it can't go up in top10. But I don't know much either, this are just my thoughts.

Sand_monkey · Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 8:26 pm Post subject:

Howls Moving Castle... *drools*

I swear they just make up random numbers sometimes...

Yebyosh · Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 10:57 pm Post subject:

Being in the top 10 doesn't mean all those movies would get a lot of cash. The top 3 might be getting way more money than the others (10-20x even), and the rest (movies 4-10) simply getting just a bit more change than the other bunch of movies.

AlDim · Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 2:00 am Post subject:

Well, the sad truth is that in Japan the masses go to watch the crap (that's movies based on popular kiddy fighting shows like Naruto) while the good movies like GitS and Steamboy usually aren't too successful (Steamboy didn't even get to the top3). An exception would be most Ghibli movies.
As about budgets - the US animation industry is quite ridiculous in that respect, even if you consider the higher wages. Dreamworks spends about 60-70 million on a movie and Disney up to 150. Probably those 80 extra that Disney spends goes to buy candy for business execs as a reward for bad management Rolling Eyes

HyDrA · Yari Ashigaru Joined: Jun 14, 2004 Posts: 215

hmm.. is it really possible to even make less then what it costed for the movie?? i never knew such disasters could happen!!! booh booh ... oh well Very Happy

gundamwranma · Heimin (Commoner) Joined: Jan 02, 2005 Posts: 56

well if the movie that people were watching were gossips and the movie sucked then i guess movie just have to lose money because of low popularity. It does happen rarely...
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GreyHavens · newbie! Joined: Dec 23, 2004 Posts: 14

you can't really compare an anime movie with LoTR, espeically when anime movies are mainly watched in japan and then pirated by china.

Riyuma · Heimin (Commoner) Joined: Dec 08, 2004 Posts: 51

it's true that most japanese like overrated anime with simple stories like Naruto and Dragonball, cuz those animes have way more popularity.
So more Japs will go see Naruto than Steamboy

eva_p01 · Posted: Wed Jan 19, 2005 8:06 pm Post subject:

I dont know, it seems what alot of americans like in anime differs alot from what people in japn like. I was talkin to one of my friends who likes anime and in his opion you and his friends perfer more of the dramas( he is from china) another 3 people i talked to from japan dont really watch any anime so they could care less. So it might just be the market is not that great over there and they are changing some of the market for america.

cthawk · Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 8:14 pm Post subject: Anime movies and money

I can't wait unit the naruto move come out!!

ltdedloser · Conscript Joined: Nov 16, 2005 Posts: 110

pandemic_virus · newbie! Joined: Jul 27, 2005 Posts: 8 Location: USA

boxofficemojo.com (usually very accurate) reports that Steamboy grossed $10,402,210. $410,388 was from Japan. Considering this it's not too bad a cut, since they will eventually be shipping it to the home market. There is a wealth to be made from DVD's and anime, anyone can tell you that.