Anime Box office figures

[Dynaman]

Just looked at the box office figures for Macross Frontier and Yamato. (this is on ANN, so if they are not good let me know).

Frontier is listed as having a total take of under $5 Million. In the US that would be considered a total washout.

Yamato is listed as having $1 Million so far (as of last weekend).

Does anyone know how much either of these cost to make?

Is the take for these two movies representative of the normal take for a movie in Japan?

If so, how does the anime industry in Japan survive? (at those figures, a general US release of each movie would be well worth the cost of translation - even a bomb would bring in that kind of money in the US).

[Gubaba]

Just looked at the box office figures for Macross Frontier and Yamato. (this is on ANN, so if they are not good let me know).

Frontier is listed as having a total take of under $5 Million. In the US that would be considered a total washout.

Yamato is listed as having $1 Million so far (as of last weekend).

Does anyone know how much either of these cost to make?

Is the take for these two movies representative of the normal take for a movie in Japan?

If so, how does the anime industry in Japan survive? (at those figures, a general US release of each movie would be well worth the cost of translation - even a bomb would bring in that kind of money in the US).

I don't know about Yamato, but Frontier opened on only 30 screens throughout the country. 5 million doesn't sound too bad for such a limited release, but I dunno...

[taksraven]

I don't know about Yamato, but Frontier opened on only 30 screens throughout the country. 5 million doesn't sound too bad for such a limited release, but I dunno...

It would probably depend on what these films were up against in the foreign import market and if that the release dates are usually busy movie-going times.

Don't forget as well, I expect that both of these films would be expected to do quite well in the DVD/blu-ray markets later on.

Taksraven

[eugimon]

A quick google search shows that 5 million is actually pretty respectable...

http://boxofficemojo.com/intl/japan/?yr=20...k=43&p=.htm

Edited December 20, 2009 by eugimon

[Robelwell202]

If so, how does the anime industry in Japan survive?

Toy sales...

Lots, and LOTS of toy sales.

[eugimon]

Most japanese movies have a shoestring budget compared to a hollywood movie. For example, princess mononoke was the most expensive anime film ever made at the time... with a ginormous budget of around 20 million USD.

Disney's 1998 Mulan cost 90 million to make by comparison.

[Freiflug88]

Hollywood movies are a whole another leaque from Anime movies due to the corprate nature of Hollywood. Anime is profitable with such small turn outs because they don't have the overpriced A-list celebrities that charge millions, expensive set building, or the huge logistical costs that come with filming Hollywood films. With Anime the major production costs are just staff and art supplies.

[Renato]

The anime market in Japan, while extremely diverse within itself, is actually very small.

Most of the animators in the industry work freelance at several studios at once, for the love of the craft. This is one very important factor in the survival of the anime industry. Yasuhiko Yoshikazu was saying a few months back at the　Japan Society for Animation Studies, that if we ever get to the stage where animators were all to be hired as proper employees of studios with proper salaries and benefits and all the rest, then the industry would collapse. Either that, or it would undergo an enormous change, perhaps transforming it into something totally unrecognisable.

Looking at figures to measure commercial success is pretty meaningless for anime movies unless you take many, many other factors into account. The same goes for the discussion we had about television ratings when Frontier was on the air. A subculture show at 1:25am getting a 2% audience share... what do we make of that? We gotta hit the books and see how anime is consumed within Japan to make any sense of that.

[UN Spacy]

Have you guys seen this before?

[taksraven]

Have you guys seen this before?

Quite like the look of it. Is it in adusted figures? Where did it come from? I remarked last year that I would be nice to know how much Macross Frontier cost per episode.

Taksraven

[sketchley]

Have you guys seen this before?

Have not. Interesting.

Now, a couple things that must be kept in mind (in addition to the aforementioned "it ain't Hollywood" point):

- Box office Mojo is giving the figures in US currency. The link given above, at the time of writing, was "US $1 = 92.08 Yen". Therefore, the figures are not the actual amounts.

- The PPP exchange rate is a better guage of the actual amounts involved. As we don't have that nor do we have the time and funds necessary to create it, the Big Mac Index will suffice. As of July 16th, the JPY was considered to be -1.0235% undervalued compared to the USD (assuming that the USD is standard, and the JPY is not, of course.)*

- cost of production. UN Spacy's post states that 1984's DYRL cost JPY 220 million to create. USD $5 million becomes JPY 456,735,353.80 (@ 1 USD = 91.3471 JPY). Therefore, if DYRL were released now (ignoring inflation in the intervening years), it'd be doubling the amount invested in it. How many Hollywood movies do this?

So, the real question is: how much did it cost to make the Macross F movie?

* http://www.oanda.com/currency/big-mac-index

Edited December 22, 2009 by sketchley

[Dynaman]

Have you guys seen this before?

Very informative, thanks for sharing that. It's amazing what the Anime industry in Japan can make for a shoestring budget (shoestring compared to what it would cost in the US)

[azrael]

Anime is relatively cheap per episode compared to stuff coming out of Hollywood. Macross Frontier's movie probably made back and more compared to its budget. The average Hollywood budget for a 1-hour show ranges from $1-2 Million USD. IIRC, Battlestar Galactica cost's for Ron Moore ran about ~$1.5-2 Million USD/episode. I've heard Stargate SG-1's budget/episode ran about $2-2.2 Million USD/episode. One of the worst I've heard was ER, which ran ~$13 Million USD/episode. I've heard a 30-minute episode of Friends spent ~$1 Million USD PER ACTOR.

So if we want to do a closer apples-to-apples comparison, The Simpsons Movie's budget was $75 Million USD. So yeah, Hollywood budgets are significantly higher so it's probably going to be harder to compare the 2 markets. If I had to make a guess, I would say Macross Frontier's budget/episode probably ranged from ~29-35 Million JPY/episode. I'm basing this on GitS:SAC's, SEED Destiny's and Eureka 7's budgets, accounting for inflation and music.

[Bri]

So if we want to do a closer apples-to-apples comparison, The Simpsons Movie's budget was $75 Million USD. So yeah, Hollywood budgets are significantly higher so it's probably going to be harder to compare the 2 markets. If I had to make a guess, I would say Macross Frontier's budget/episode probably ranged from ~29-35 Million JPY/episode. I'm basing this on GitS:SAC's, SEED Destiny's and Eureka 7's budgets, accounting for inflation and music.

Afaik the budget per episode is the total amount raised by the production commitee devided by the number of episodes. Most of the budget would go towards paying for advertisement and broadcasting slots, leaving a lot less for the actual production. The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry did some research on the subject in 2002-2003. The flow chart on page 5 is telling: http://www.meti.go.jp/policy/media_content...anime200306.pdf.

Edited December 22, 2009 by Bri

[sketchley]

For those that can't read Japanese, the flow chart basically says:

￥50,000,000 from sponsor ends up with ￥8,000,000 being spent on the actual production. The rest? At least ￥20,000,000 to secure local broadcasters, ￥12,000,000 for the key broadcaster, ￥10,000,000 to the advertising agency.