catlover

Wow that's a HUGE difference. I think this also shows that Frozen attracts older crowds too.

You just answered your own question. LOTR and Narnia are based on well-known books, and MU, FN, TS3 have Pixar brand. Frozen is an original animated film. So without the hype from worldwide success, Let It Go & soundtrack popularity, and Oscars, Frozen would have opened lower (may around half) than it actually did in March. Yes with December release legs would have probably been better, but with smaller OW, wouldn't it be the same or even lower in the end? For example, $4m OW with 15x multiplier will give it $60m total, but $7m OW with smaller 10x multiplier will give it $70m. Which one is better?

Ah yes, I forgot it's 3-day holiday this weekend. Frozen will probably increase. So yeah around $8m.

Yeah, if Frozen had been released in December, it could have had better legs, but the OW would have definitely been lower.

I think it will stay flat. If its OW turns out to be $7.5m, then it will make $7.5m too this weekend. Weekdays would be good too. There are some sold out shows at Toho Shibuya today (Monday). Not a crap release date at all. The LOTR movies were all released in March and they were huge. The first Narnia movie was released in March and it made almost 7b yen. There are spring breaks in March so it's actually a pretty good release date for family movies. Besides, Disney thanksgiving movies are always released in March (Enchanted, The Princess and the Frog, Tangled, Wreck-it Ralph). So it's not surprising at all that Frozen is released in the same month too. And I'm pretty sure Big Hero 6 will get the same release date.

That's probably for the last 10 years or so because I'm pretty sure Spirited Away and Titanic's runs were better. But Les Mis was indeed the exception.

Well, new year holiday certainly helped it. But the legs were just out of this world. Its 4th weekend was only down 8% from its OW. At that point, it had already made $31m with $3.3m weekend. So something crazy happened during the first 4 weeks other than the holiday. I'm thinking The WOM was spreading very fast during new year holiday. Oscar nominations announcement probably helped too, since on the weekend after the announcement, it only dropped 0.3%.

No, I believe Toy Story 3 is 2nd, and MU is 3rd ($8.4m). That $9.4m is for 3 days, while the OW on other animated movies are for 2 days, and based on sell out reports, Frozen's Friday should be bigger than $1m.

Not quite $10m, but that is still a great opening, way bigger than I predicted before it opened!

We were talking about 2-day OW. In Japan, OW always means 2 days, unless stated otherwise.

See, this is exactly why I predict realistically. If I had been carried away too, the disappointment would have been bigger . Anyway, you should remember Frozen opened on Friday. Had it opened on Saturday it would probably have beaten MU's OW. Besides, we don't know yet the results nationwide. We only have partial data. Still possible for Frozen to have bigger OW.

Haha. Well, short explanation. アナと雪の女王 is Frozen. The first column is number of tickets sold. Second column is number of seats. The third one is number of showings.

I knew someone would ask about this. Some people on the internet are accusing Frozen copied the story of a Japanese anime, Saint Seiya Asgardian episodes, especially the ones with Polaris Hilda and her younger sister, Freya. The older one became villainous, there was ice involved, and the younger sister went to help, or something like that. And if I remember correctly, those are the only similar things between the two. And Elsa isn't even a villain. I think those accusations were based only on trailers and storyline, but they are actually completely different stories. Only small groups of otaku who have nothing else to do in their lives, make a fuss about it, nobody else cares.

I don't know for sure, but I think day showings were stronger than evening showings, but the differences were not that big. On Sunday however, day showings will be stronger than Saturday, but evening showings will be weaker. At least normally they are. So at the end of the day, Sunday increase might be less than 30% or even 25%. But I hope Frozen will stay strong throughout. It would be amazing if Frozen surprises us and beats MU's 2-day OW.

I think I posted it in Frozen OS thread, but I'll say it again. Frozen is not a Pixar movie, not a sequel/prequel, and not a Ghibli movie. Also, Hollywood movies have been struggling in Japan for several years now. Only few of them hit it big. Yes there was worldwide hype before Frozen was release, but you see, Japan is a country that is rarely affected by those kind of hype. They have their own culture and taste, sometimes they're the same with the rest of the world, but many times they're different. They decide what they like and what they don't regardless of the hype in other countries. That's why I put that "worldwide success" hype aside when I made the OW prediction. The previous WDAS movie opened with $3m or so, and 6m is a great OW for movies in general. Especially because I expected it to be very leggy, since I was sure once they saw Frozen, they would like it. So I thought it was reasonable and realistic, based on the information we have. FYI, I visited some Japanese movie forums to see what people there were predicting for Frozen. And guess what, their predictions were even lower than that. But apparently in this case, the marketing and media in Japan succeeded in delivering that worldwide hype, and the people there reacted accordingly. Something that doesn't often happen.

They're not pessimistic, just realistic. Doesn't mean that they're not rooting for Frozen. Besides, for me it's better to underestimate and be surprised than overestimate and be disappointed. Also, this forum needs people who stay calm so the predictions won't get crazier and crazier because they tend to bring disappointment in the end, and we don't want that, do we? I think it's more about how box office numbers there are not as transparent as in other countries. Official weekend box office reports usually don't include detailed numbers for every movies. They also don't have daily reports. That's why we don't have Friday & Saturday numbers yet. So yeah, nothing to do with technology.

Wow that is surprising how Frozen could match MU's admission, considering it's not Pixar, it's not a sequel/prequel, and Saturday was its 2nd day as opposed to opening day for MU. I mean, I expected great legs, but not opening this big. Yes, I think $8m 2-day OW is possible, especially if Frozen explodes on Sunday.

I think you misread or something. 8m 3-day OW means around 6m 2-day OW. And MU's number was 2-day OW, 6m and 8.3m aren't similar, so not really a good comparison. But I personally think Frozen's OW will be bigger than that estimate.

Oh I forgot, Friday was Toho day (cheaper ticket prices). So that number was a little bit inflated I guess?

That's great! Bigger OD than Doraemon despite opening on Friday. So around 310m yen OD? Probably higher since Frozen has 3D and more adults on Friday. I've seen reports saying that most of the people in Frozen shows are teens, groups of high school & college students (mostly girls) and couples. How much was MU's OD in yen?

Yeah like I said before, Japan is a very leggy market. They look insane, but those multipliers are common there. That's why Frozen doesn't need a big OW to get a big total. But of course, the bigger its OW, the better.

So around 700m yen or $7m 2-day OW or even more? I thought it would need 3 days to do that. That's great!

I checked Toho Cinema's site to see how Frozen is doing. In Toho Shibuya, all of the shows for Frozen today (Friday) are sold out! And there are shows for tomorrow that are already close to sold out. In other Toho theaters, many of the shows for today are either sold out or 80-90% full. The responses on twitter are overwhelmingly positive (of course they are, it's Frozen), most of them are saying they want to see it again. And apparently, judging from those tweets, the hype was pretty big before it opened. So far so good.

So I checked iTunes Japan and found out that Idina's Let It Go is #2 and the Japanese version is #6. And it looks like Let It Go was #1 until yesterday, then a new release pushed it back to #2. That's a good sign right? I mean the movie hasn't even been released but the song is already a hit.

Yeah, we can talk about numbers, historical data, but we don't know the real buzz there at the moment.