Toho just tweet that this festival is Oscar's precursor and Ghibli Japan account retweet that, I think at this point they're aiming for awards rather than money. Miyazaki already broke box-office record in the past, but he hasn't break into Oscar's best picture area yet.
For record, only one Japanese film was nominated (Drive My Car/2021) and only 3 animated films were nominated (BATB/1991, Up/2009, and Toy Story 3/2010), none of them win. If HDYL nominated in best pic, it'd be the first animated film outside American to be in this category. If it wins, then it'd be the first Japanese film to win, and also the first animated film to win best picture. Now this is something Miyazaki hasn't done yet.

Elemental ads in what I'm pretty sure is Shinjuku station in Tokyo. Busiest train station in the world.

edit:

hmm some people in the comments are saying this is fake. But I can't really tell. They say reflections on the floor are the clue.

But why would someone do this? I think it's real because there was Mission Impossible 7 stuff here a week ago

Edit:

I see the reflections on the floor are green while the content isn't green.

It is obvious to anyone with eyes that they superimposed the 'Elemental' images onto the original images.

Weekly Shonen Jump has been on fire since 2020. Not only being the source of the record-breaking manga sales in 2020 and 2021 (series' in their magazine sold over 120 million physical books in 2020, and around another 100 million physical copies in 2021), but also being the source of records at the box-office.

Not only have they had their own 4 biggest films ever release in the past 3 years, but those 4 films are also the four of the five biggest films since 2020.

In addition... Demon Slayer become the #1 all-time film (breaking a 19 year old record), One Piece became #8 all-time, Slam Dunk is currently the #14 all-time (could aim for #12-13), and Jujutsu Kaisen became #17 all-time.

They've also been the only source to produce any ¥15 billion+ films in the market since 2016, with an incredible 3 films (once Slam Dunk gets there) doing it in the past 3 years. They'll have 3 of the 14 films to ever reach this milestone.

Top 10 Japanese Film of 2023
1. Toei's "THE FIRST SLAM DUNK" ~ ¥15.0B
2.Toho's "Detective Conan: Black Iron Submarine" - ¥13.44B (as of 7/24)
3. Toho's "Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room The Movie" - ¥4.50B (as of 7/24)
4. Toho's "Doraemon: Nobita's Sky Utopia" - ¥4.34B
5. Toho/Aniplex's "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – To the Swordsmith Village" - ¥4.16B
6. Toho's "My Happy Marriage" - ¥2.80B
7. Warner Bros's "Tokyo Revengers 2: Bloody Halloween - Destiny" - ¥2.69B (as of 7/23)
8. Toho's "Fragments of the Last Will" - ¥2.67B
9. Toei's "LEGEND &BUTTERFLY" - ¥2.47B
10. Toho's "Dr. Coto's Clinic" - ¥2.44B

Seems like HDYL/BATH will become #3 this weekend.

Suzume - ¥14.86B (via TOHO Press Release)

Do we have any data on the Rokudenashi Blues movies? The IP was popular, and it did receive several movies I believe

I'll try and look them up! Kanroji might be able to assist too. (No pressure, Kanroji! lol).

Kingdom 3 easy won Friday as expected, and will win the weekend handily too. The Friday is actually ~30% higher than Kingdom 2, but 3 opened two weeks later in July when summer vacation is in effect, so the higher Friday is normal. They'll probably be really close on Saturday, and I'd predict 2 wins on Sunday since it was boosted a bit from the holiday Monday it had.

So, probably going to have a very comparable 3-day opening as its predecessor. Kingdom 2 opened to ¥1.093 billion ($7.9m) / 725,000 admissions, so expect a similar number. It went on to gross ¥5.16 billion ($38m) / 3.65m admissions. Kingdom 3 has two less weeks in summer, but it's also opening closer to Obon Festival, so that probably counters the advantages out there.

MI7 and How Do You Live? will be fighting for #2 in their second and third weekends. Current advantage MI7, but they're close enough that Sat/Sun can change that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this weekend looks rather disastrous for How Do You Live. This 3rd weekend.

Elemental releases on Digital PVOD on August 15. I've heard that often means the Disney plus release is a month after that.

So that potentially means a mid-September Disney Plus release for Elemental, which would surely kneecap the Japanese run, if it has any momentum.

It's recovered a little into the early afternoon, so might be too early to say. It doesn't appear a particularly strong hold is in the cards either way though. If it can get under 30%, that'd be "good", but it really needed something far better than that after its big second weekend drop. If it would happen to be over 30% though... I'm probably ready to say ¥10 billion is unlikely. The Wind Rises really only got over the milestone because Miyazaki announced he was "retiring" again which gave it a boost into its run when ¥10 billion was looking 50/50. That announcement won't work this time around, so I'll be curious to see what they do.

And it doesn't have the "well, every holdover performed poorly" like last weekend to fallback on this weekend either. Most of the holdovers are, in fact, looking at great or even stellar holds.

Well... younger skewing films generally collapse when September begins since school starts back. This is why studios stack July/August with so many films. Younger-skewing films do very poorly in off-season months. So, if Elemental does skew young, it won't have a *huge* impact, at least not as much as their other films.

Although, if the Disney+ release would get announced before September, theaters could greatly reduce its seating/showings (or drop it entirely) since they have done so in the past when a Disney film received a Disney+ release date.

So this isn't good news, but until we know for sure, announcing the Disney+ release for mid-September at the beginning of September shouldn't be crazy impactful. But if anything is announced during August, not good.

Has to be the most disappointing run of the year for me ): thought it would do so much better than this...

I don't think this has been asked but what is the reactions online from the Japanese public especially on social media sites about the Netflix adaptation of the anime/manga One Piece which comes in about a month. Like how do they feel about it especially the trailers?

I had reservations since The Wind Rises was going to struggle to hit ¥10 billion. That one was viewed as Miyazaki's swan song, and despite that, it took an official "retirement" announcement to give it the boost it needed to comfortably get above the milestone.

And since then, it's been 9/10 years since Miyazaki and Ghibli have had any real presence at the box office. That's quite a lot of time, and as mentioned before, the demographics have really changed a lot in that time as they continue to accelerate in doing. Studio Ghibli's status, as well as Miyazaki's, is probably nowhere near what it was 10 years ago. They sort of passed the torch when they closed their film production department in 2014, and other directors and studios (namely Shinkai, but also Hosoda/Studio Chizu) have more or less taken that and replaced them in many ways I feel. Not to mention how audiences have *really* taken to anime films based on manga/anime properties in recent years.

I don't think How Do You Live? has officially been announced by Miyazaki to be his final film yet (has it?), it's just perceived that way again, so maybe they'll repeat their Wind Rises tactic and make an official announcement either before the end of summer or maybe the week before silver week in September (I think this was when they did it for Wind Rises) to give it a bump. But I don't expect such a bump to be as big this time because HDYL is likely considered his final film by more people this time around.

It kinda feels like an aging, "retired" legendary athlete coming back for one more match or game or season. Everyone gets hyped, they're going to show the whippersnappers how it's done, etc., but their performance is ultimately disappointing for obvious reasons. If their passion is to return (or make another movie in Miyazaki's case), totally fine, go for it. But there should always be lowered expectations in these cases.

I feel what you're saying, I just really thought this could be something special but it clearly wasn't

Still excited to see it myself but it's rather sad to see Miyazaki go out on a whimper BO wise

If it can manage ¥10 billion, I think that will be satisfactory. Of course, while that's great, it'll feel lackluster given his history.

Sunday really needs to deliver though. If it's another ~35% drop, I don't like its chances because not only does that make it harder mathematically, but it's probably going to be subject to heavier screen/showtime cuts starting next week when the many August openers begin to roll out.

Not only do Japanese Elemental trailers and tv spots get hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views, there seems to be a discourse on Japanese youtube on whether or not Elemental will be preachy or not.

So yeah I think there's a reasonable amount of anticipation. Really wonder how many seats it will be allotted.

It shares a release date with Crayon Shin-chan and Transformers though... I already am sure it will be evenly matched with the former in seats but I don't know what they'll do about the latest Transformers.

It does look like another weekly drop of more than 30% for How Do You Live though so I expect it to lose seats next week.

https://www.tokyometro.jp/news/2023/215996.html

Well here's real news about Elemental and Tokyo transit. Apparently there will be a scavenger hunt/stamp collection for the movie running for a month starting on the release date of August 4 and ending on September 3.

All revolving around stations in the Tokyo Metro system.

How is Dead Reckoning doing, Corpse? Not just in isolation but in terms of the franchise and the yearly chart and/or expectations...

And where does it look to finish?

I wonder how far it will go. Barbie will debut in Japan in 2 weeks.

1st Film did ¥1.5B in Rental (1992 Film) Rest of the films need to be check on SF Database and Bookish reference.