tarabeesley

Is there any way we can see how many cinemas a film will be shown in? I imagine 'The Boy and the Heron' (released on Tuesday) will be shown in about 70 cinemas, if the screen count for 'Howl's Moving Castle', 'Spirited Away' and 'The Wind Rises' is anything to go by. It also looks like the screen count is limited - I only see about 16 Oden cinemas are showing it and a similar number from Cineworld. I think Optimum tried putting 'Ponyo' out into 200 plus screens but it bombed. I guess the final gross for 'The Boy and the Heron' will be similar to 'Howl's Moving Castle' - only about 1.5 US dollars. It is a shame as I think if they gave it more screenings it would do much better - it was number 1 at the American, French, Taiwanese and South Korean box office and is doing well in Australia too, grossing more than all the other Ghibli films.

I don't understand - do you mean it isn't doing so well in Hong Kong?

Does anyone know why the movie is doing so well in Russia : $2,288,563 after two weeks. I don't think a Ghibli film ever did so well there before. Also doing very well in Australia. It'll be released in the UK on Tuesday but I think it will be release on only about 70 screens meaning it won't make big numbers. UK distributors don't have confidence in Ghibli. I know they tried to release Ponyo in about 200 theaters and it bombed. Also, how is it doing in Hong Kong? Didn't it have a 4 million opening weekend? What will be the final gross there?

If The Boy and the Heron does gross this much in China, it would definitely make it a profitable film, even though we don't know the budget. It was the most expensive film produced in Japan. It has already made about 120 million so far. Although, Suzuki said it had already made a profit back when it had only grossed 56 million dollars.

56 million is very high - its second biggest market. How likely is it to achieve this? I can't see this figure on the link you posted. It will be Ghibli's first 'new' film released in China. I also heard that Ghibli was having trouble selling it to China because it was predicted to bomb there. Do you think the box office performance of other Ghibli releases in China would've been suppressed by the fact that those films would've been available on the pirate market for in some cases twenty years?

Can you please give a source for this? I guess this could go either way. Either it could gross as much as Porco Rosso did this year (not very much, about 3.6 million dollars according to The Numbers) or as much as Spirited Away (about 70 million). What do you think? Castle in the Sky also did well this year, grossing about 20 mil in China.