What? Toho is at the bottom?

ZAKZAK reports the results of holiday season box office race in Japan.

Top earner of the period is "Letters from Iwo Jima" (3.67 bil. yen) starring Ken Watanabe, and the second is "Love and Honor" (3 bil. yen) starring Takuya Kimura, both familiar faces to Japanese audience.  (Numbers are both as of Jan. 8th.)  Final gross estimate is "Iwo Jima" 4.5-5 bil. yen, "Love and Honor" 3.5-4 bil. yen, and after these, "Eragon", "Oh-Oku" and "007 Casino Royale" follow with 2-2.5 bil. yen range.

The total ticket sales revenue between Dec. 23 and Jan. 8 was rather slow, approximately 85% of last year, when "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (11 bil. yen), "YAMATO" (5 bil. yen) and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" (4.7 bil. yen) marked big.

And by the way, with the relative success of "Love and Honor", Shochiku is ranked at the top, and "Oh-Oku"'s Toei is No. 2 among the hoga production studios during this holiday period.  On the contrary, the invincible Toho, who was by far the most successful throughout 2006, is ranked No. 3 (= bottom of the big 3), with disappointing result of "NANA 2", whose final gross is estimated as 1.5 bil. yen range.  What?  Really?

Source:  ZAKZAK

Comments

[Michi]

Jason,

Yup, you are right, and I will clarify in my entry that this result is only for the "oshogatsu" (new years holiday) period - according to ZAKZAK. Still, this result is a bit surprising, and my impression that the whole line-up was rather weak was unfortunately right.

[Jason Gray]

Actually it does say 年間トータル doesn't it...I think it's just a mistake!

[Jason Gray]

Hi,

This threw me off at first, too, but what it means is that in the "official" New Year's holiday period (Dec. 23-Jan. 8), Toho ranked 3rd in box office. They usually come first, as they did last year, but the failure of "Nana 2" vs. the success of Shochiku's "Love and Honor" and Toei's "Oh-Oku" turned the tables.

Overall, Toho had its best year in history in 2006, earning 58.7 billion yen (US$485.9 million), which was more than double of Shochiku (Y14b) and Toei (Y13.3b) combined.