"Unfair The Movie" 3-billion pace start

With school kids in the midst of spring break, Japanese weekend box office continues to be kids shift.  Kids' animes "Doraemon", "Happy Feet", "Keroro Gunso" and "One Piece" and youth story "Battery" dominated the top 10 ranking last weekend.

In terms of revenue, not the adimssion number, however, "Unfair The Movie" was supposed to be No. 2 instead of "Doraemon", according to Mr. Texas.  "Unfair" is the feature-film version of FujiTV's detective drama, starring the same actress Ryoko Shinohara, whose character is a female detective, divorced with children and hard-drinker.  Yosuke Eguchi, Susumu Terajima and other stars also appear in the movie version.

Eiga.com reports that the weekend BO was 371 million yen with 272,000 admissions, which is well in the range of estimated final gross of 3 billion yen, a medium size hit for a J-movie.  Mr. Texas points out that its TV drama version was not particularly a big hit, 15.4% average ratings in Kanto area, and considering that TV version of last year's biggest live-action hit "Umizaru" was only 13.1% and "Kisarazu Cats' Eye" 10.1%, it may be that original TV drama rating does not have much correlation with the movie version popularity.

So, he wonders, what will happen to coming-soon theater-version "HERO", starring the king of J-drama Takuya Kimura, which had a legendary 34.2% rating with the TV version.  Interesting...

Please see Ryuganji or  Kogyo Tsushin for the complete top10 list.

Source:  Eiga.com, Movie Consultant Blog, Kogyo Tsushin

Comments

[Michi]

Thanks for your comment, erica lee, that is a good point. Just to clarify, for this article, I am just translating Mr. Texas's comments, and I really don't have strong opinion about this topic..

Personally, I am very curious how Kimutaku's very special status will pan out in the movie world. Honestly speaking, when I went to Japan in January, I was VERY impressed with his acting in "Love and Honor", then went home and watched "Karei naru Ichizoku" on TV but was not too impressed - not too bad, but was just ordinary him. I understand how special he is in Japan, as you point out, and am hoping that his movie appearances will bring about a new dimention to him. That is great not only for himself but for Japanese movie industry as a whole.

[erica_lee]

Thanks for the insight. TV rating and movie box office do appear to be hardly correlated.

However,we can take a holistic view. Though Umizaru took only a 13% rating, however, note that this 13% actually represents about 13 million audience. Assuming that 25% of these audience were highly satisfied with the TV program and paid the ticket to see the movie, we are talking about 3 million moviegoers which is equivalent to around 4.5billion yen box. Thus, a 13% TV rating is not bad, if those who watch really like the show

Analyzing Kimutaku's film or drama is a daunting task. Kimutaku's works are a different breed. He is not just an ordinary actor or idol, he is the national actor of Japan. Who could dream that Love and Honor could take home 4billion, considering it is not a mainstream commercial movie? His latest drama, karei naru, draws 39.6% rating in the Kansei region. This is the number which only he can take nowadays in Japan, no one else

just my two cents. Hope you dont mind