Hollywood Losing The Japanese Audience

[Mulboyne]

[Mulboyne]

UPI: Homegrown Japanese films may top imports

For the first time in more than two decades, domestic films in Japan may tally higher annual box office numbers than all foreign imports combined. On the strength of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," foreign films have beaten their domestic peers in Japan through the first 10 months of 2006, yet a strong homegrown holiday lineup could shift that position dramatically, Daily Variety reported. Included among those Japanese offerings that could increase the current 47 percent of total box office numbers is "Nana 2," a sequel to director Kentaro Otani's film that grossed $34.4 million during its 2005 release. In the first 10 months of 2006, the top 10 spots on Japan's box office charts have been split down the middle with "Tales from Earthsea" and "Umizaru 2 -- Test of Trust" heading the domestic charge. Daily Variety said if the domestic offerings can surpass their foreign counterparts, it would mark the first time Japanese studios have accomplished the goal since 1985.

[Jack]

I always enjoy Japanese films because they tend to depict real life albeit dramatized. When I watched the original Shall We Dance movie in Japanese it was very nice but it did not translate very well to American because of the cultural issues. Shall we Dance was a "cute" movie in Japanese but the American version was lost on me. Another film I enjoyed was Firefly Dreams. Unagi, amongst the "art" movie types was also very inetersting. I guess you don't need huge explosions and fast car chase to make good movies.

[Jack]

One more thing. Several years ago on a flight on Air Canada I saw a Japanese film the title was "Memories and Desires" at least I think that was the title. This film was Japanese with Japanese actors but they were speaking in English. It's as if they had shot the movie twice with one scene in Japanese for the Japanese market and the same scene reshot with the actors speaking in English for the overseas market. It's the first time I had seen a movie (other than French-canadian movies) that was shot this way. Anyway, I can't find that movie anywhere on the Internet. I liked it and would like to buy the DVD but can't seem to find it.

The storyline was very very Japanese. Boy and girl meet in Tokyo and get married. They honeymoon in New Zealand where the husband dies on the beach. Girl stays (lives) on the spot where her husband died on the beach for many years until she can't anymore and returns to Japan. Even after several years girl keeps the memory of her husband/boyfriend alive in Japan...

[Mulboyne]

I saw a Japanese film the title was "Memories and Desires"

I think you mean Memory & Desire. It's a New Zealand film by Niki Caro who went on to make Whale Rider.

[Jack]

I think you mean Memory & Desire. It's a New Zealand film by Niki Caro who went on to make Whale Rider.

Holy fuck. Yes, that's the one. I had seen this on an overnight flight to Europe and my memorries, sorry memory, was clouded. Yes, that's the film. Mulboyne sama, ありがとうございました。A 45 degree bow to you.
ジャック

[Mulboyne]

Keio U: New J-movie ecosystem

"Total number of feature films produced in Japan has increased to 500 this year, twice as many as three years ago." Shuji Sato, Head of International Distribution, Motion Picture & Home Entertainment Dept. at Pony Canyon Inc. explains. "The number increase can mostly be attributed to small productions for mini theaters, and many of them are doing well in their niches. I hear in Europe, too, domestic film share is increasing, so I guess weakening of Hollywood is felt globally, not only in Japan". Pony Canyon has a good reason to be confident. Its parent company Fuji TV started current "hoga bubble" by backing up Bayside Shakedown series, a detective-action story, based on its own TV-drama series. Its second feature film Bayside Shakedown 2 earned 17 billion yen, the historical highest gross among live action J-movies, in 2003...more...

Click on links on the lefthand sidebar for more on trends in the industry.

[Mulboyne]

Hollywood Reporter: 2006 has been a very good year for Japan b.o.

For Japanese films and filmmakers, 2006 has been an excellent year. Business has been so good and titles have attracted so much international attention that some are even saying that it will go down in the history of the domestic industry as the year Japanese cinema came of age. Releases surpassed the total of 356 from the previous year, with six titles earning more than \5 billion ($42 million) at the boxoffice. The top earner was the Studio Ghibli animated title "Tales From Earthsea," which brought in around \7.8 billion ($66 million), followed by "Limit of Love,"which earned some \7.1 billion ($62 million). And while the dedicated film studios have fared well, Japan's terrestrial broadcasters have tested the waters this year like never before, edging from telefilms toward full-length theatrical releases.

"2006 is clearly a turning point for us -- we could even say it's epoch-making -- because we are likely to achieve the best boxoffice records since we started this business," said Makito Sugiyama, deputy vp of the content business department at Tokyo Broadcasting System Television, Inc. "We are forging ahead to provide increasingly exciting entertainment and challenging new genres that we have not tried before --such as comedy and action titles," he said. "We have also found that one of the advantages of a TV broadcaster producing full features is that we are able to develop both features and TV drama series based on the same source, as we have done with 'Memories of Matsuko' and 'Sayonara Game Kisarazu Cats' Eye.' "

TBS produced seven feature films in 2006, including "The Sinking of Japan," which earned an impressive $44 million at the boxoffice, and "Nana 2." Household names in the cast have helped boost sales, according to Sugiyama, which has a knock-on effect in terms of foreign sales. The broadcaster also has made a conscious effort to raise its profile abroad, adding a presence at the Pusan film festival market and the event at the Tokyo International Film Festival to its regular appearances at Cannes and the American Film Market.

Nippon Television's film department also is leveraging the know-how it has accumulated in selling TV programs to market its films, said Seiji Okuda, manager of the division. "Here are two main reasons for us to move into international sales," he said. "First of all, the number of countries acquiring Japanese films is increasing, even with pre-sales. And secondly, it is becoming more popular to release the titles theatrically very close to the Japanese schedule, particularly in Asian markets. "We are convinced that it is better that we handle both production and sales to simplify the process and also to earn more profit," he added. NTV produced four titles in 2006 and invested in another 10 pictures. The best performer was "Death Note" and its sequel, which has earned \7.5 billion ($63.5 million) to date and is still going strong. "The market for feature films in Asia is growing," Okuda said. "Previously, only artistic films worked overseas but Japan's modern entertainment culture -- especially the commercial ones of film, 'manga' (Japanese comics) and animation -- have become more popular and attracted more attention."

Terrestrial broadcasters getting in on the movie act are looking to the success of the largest Japanese TV company, Fuji Television, which first began producing feature films back in 1969 and has produced more than 170 titles, many of which also have been sold overseas. Fuji's motivation was that the broadcasting rights for Hollywood blockbusters were becoming prohibitively expensive "We have increased the number of our productions this year, and that is because we are constantly expanding and diversifying our feature film business, and we don't intend to rest on our laurels," said Chihiro Kameyama, head of Fuji's Motion Picture Department. "I feel that the domestic boxoffice still has room for growth, so our goal is to get more people to come to movie theaters to watch films."

[GuyJean]

[floatl][/floatl]Japanese Films' Takings top Foreign Films' for 1st Time in 21 Years
http://home.kyodo.co.jp/modules/fstStory/index.php?storyid=295977

Japanese films logged a record 107.75 billion yen in box-office takings in 2006, outpacing those of imported movies for the first time in 21 years, the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan said Tuesday.

The Japanese film boom also boosted the number of films released to a record 821 in the reporting year, up 90 over the year before..

Is this a result of Japanese films getting better, Hollywood getting worse, choosing shitty films to import, the Japanese 'taste' changing, or a combination of all four?..

GJ

[Mulboyne]

[Mulboyne]

Variety: Japan box office in summer daze

Japan's summer box office fell sharply compared with last year, when local pics powered admissions, but Hollywood pics have continued to perform well. July B.O. totaled \12.659 billion ($112 million), down 24.4% drop from $148 million in July 2006. Admissions fell 19.6% year on year, according to the survey conducted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. B.O takings for May and June were down by 7.1% and 13.5%, respectively. Admissions for the three-month period slid 18.2%. The poor showing by local pics was the main reason for the sorry numbers, with Japanese product suffering a 41.4% B.O. plunge in July vs. last year.

No Japanese summer pic could match the stupendous perfs of last year's July releases "Tales From Earthsea" ($67.7 million total) and "Sinking of Japan" ($42.2 million). The May live-action release "Umizaru 2: Test of Trust" also raked in the yen last year, finishing with $62.8 million. Foreign pics recorded only a 3.2% year-on-year drop in July, buoyed by strong numbers from "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End." Among Japanese movies in July, toons performed best, with the genre finishing only 11.2% behind last year. The leader was the 10th "Pokemon" feature, which is closing in on $44.2 million following its July release.

[Mulboyne]

The final 2007 tally is in and foreign films beat Japanese films at the box office. Total receipts were 198 billion yen with Japanese films taking in around 95 billion so it looks like the reversal in 2006 wasn't the start of a consistent trend.

[ttjereth]

The final 2007 tally is in and foreign films beat Japanese films at the box office. Total receipts were 198 billion yen with Japanese films taking in around 95 billion so it looks like the reversal in 2006 wasn't the start of a consistent trend.

More likely just the shitty movies that have been put out lately

[Mulboyne]

Asahi: Japanese films losing luster once again

In 2006, for the first time in 21 years, Japanese movies generated more revenue than foreign films released in this country. But this was short-lived. A survey by the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan Inc. of 2007 ticket sales, released Thursday, shows that foreign movies accounted for 52.3 percent of combined box office revenue. The survey also showed that the domestic movie industry relied heavily on tie-ups with TV networks. The highest-grossing film of 2007 was "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" with 10.9 billion yen. Meanwhile, "HERO" brought in the most box office revenue for a Japanese movie with 8.15 billion yen. The film, starring popular actor Takuya Kimura, ranked third overall. Combined box office revenue for both foreign and Japanese movies stood at about 198.4 billion yen, down 2.2 percent from 2006. Overall ticket sales for Japanese movies came to about 94.6 billion yen, down 12.3 percent. Toho Co., one of Japan's big three movie studios, was involved in producing or distributing all top 10 grossing Japanese movies.

Famous for making "Godzilla" movies, Toho has mainly focused on production and distribution for the last 30 years. More than half of the top 10 grossing Japanese movies had TV networks as their main producer. "HERO," "Saiyuki," and "Unfair the Movie," are all adaptations of popular TV dramas broadcast by Fuji Television Network Inc. and its affiliates. Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc. was a major producer in two of the list's movies, while Nippon Television Network Corp. co-produced two. Half of the 26 movies in which Toho was involved had TV networks as main producers. Compared with its rivals Shochiku Co. and Toei Co., Toho's connection with TV networks stands out. Only three of Shochiku's 27 movies were collaborations with broadcasters. Toei had none in its 16 works last year.

Toho's outstanding record in 2007 is attributed to its collaborations with Fuji TV, Nippon TV and TBS, all known for producing or making popular TV dramas. Links with TV networks are also advantageous as they rerun original broadcast versions and give exposure to adaptations ahead of release. About 60 percent of moviegoers said that TV had helped decide their choice, according to one survey. Some are concerned about the effect of such close collaborations. Hiroshi Sashida, editor of Bunka Tsushin Journal, a magazine covering the entertainment industry, said, "If the other two studios stop putting emphasis on making Japanese films of their own, Japanese movie culture could decline."

[Big Booger]

They should be losing the FG audience as well.... Went to see the Alien Predator Requiem and was totally lost. It sucked. The director(s) should kill themselves. It was a wretched pile of shit and I felt like I'd been robbed after paying Japanese prices for such a POS movie.

[Mulboyne]

Cine La Sept, one of Japan's first digital projection theatres has closed after less than five years in business. It mainly showed Japanese films and was fairly unusual in offering tables and sofa seating, none of which it seems the market wanted.

[Catoneinutica]

They should be losing the FG audience as well.... Went to see the Alien Predator Requiem and was totally lost. It sucked. The director(s) should kill themselves. It was a wretched pile of shit and I felt like I'd been robbed after paying Japanese prices for such a POS movie.

My condolences over your dead 1800 yen, Booger. I was watching the original Ridley Scott Alien on cable the other night and thought, if only Ridley had known in 1979 that thirty years on his inspiration would devolve to overseas-market-targeted poop like Alien Predator Requiem.

-catone
-paid to see Chronicles of Riddick back in 2004

[American Oyaji]

-paid to see Chronicles of Riddick back in 2004

One of my favorite movies!:D

[Greji]

They should be losing the FG audience as well.... Went to see the Alien Predator Requiem and was totally lost. It sucked. The director(s) should kill themselves. It was a wretched pile of shit and I felt like I'd been robbed after paying Japanese prices for such a POS movie.

BB, I feel for you it is the lack of education these days and the new controls over the students that has resulted in producing this sort of thing. So different from our days since they have even taken daikon off the menu at school cafeterias.

[Catoneinutica]

One of my favorite movies!:D

Okay, now I feel better about saying, in retrospect, Chronicles of Riddick wasn't that bad. It had a lot of great one-liners ("It's an animal thing."), but most memorably it featured an alien world named Crematoria, where the temperature ranged from -300F at night to 700F in the day.

-catone
-and it wasn't a pretentious crapfest like the J-chick-starring Babel

[Mulboyne]

Reuters: Toho says Hollywood losing luster in Japan

Toho Co Ltd, Japan's largest movie company, said the country's fading interest in Hollywood movies has cast a cloud over its growth prospects, overshadowing a boost from a revival in Japanese films. Toho is both Japan's biggest distributor of movies and its largest theater operator, with a nationwide network of some 70 cinemas housing 560 screens. "The popularity of Japanese movies is a very good thing for us as a distributor but in terms of our cinema operations the drop-off in Hollywood movies is not something to smile about," Toho President Hideyuki Takai told Reuters in an interview.

Toho posted a 16.5 percent jump in operating profit for the year ended in February, boosted by the runaway success of the Japanese animation "Ponyo" and other popular home-grown productions. In July the company raised its profit forecast for the current business year by 10 percent on the back of strong sales from Japanese films, but its new estimate still represents a fall of about 20 percent from a year earlier. In addition to the lack of a blockbuster on the scale of "Ponyo," the sluggish performance of Hollywood films is expected to drag on Toho's earnings. Last year Japan's box office revenue from foreign movies fell by nearly a quarter. "It was unexpected. I have never experienced something like this in my movie industry career. Up until now Hollywood movies have been the engine of the industry," Takai said.

[American Oyaji]

Perhaps, the Japanese are used to the Japanese formula of entertainment that the increasingly formulaic Hollywood just doesn't translate.

I mean, recently in movies it's getting to the point that when watching a movie I've never seen before, I'm able to predict what the next line of dialog is going to be. C'MON Hollywoodland. SURPRISE ME!!

[FG Lurker]

I think part of the reason things have been down for Hollywood movies this summer is that many of the movies that came out over the past months were written/created during the big writer's strike.

Hopefully there will be some more interesting flicks coming up once we work through the current batch of turkeys.

[Midwinter]

So I saw GI Joe the other day and the three trailers before the movie were for Fast and Furious, Wolverine Origins and Doomsday which were all *ah-hem* coming soon. Now the first two are a few months old, bad enough for cinema buffs that want to see a new movie when its new, but Doomsday came out last year and there's not a snowball's chance in hell I'm going to pay 1,800 yen to see what should be a DVD rental. Actually, I'm really starting to think these delays are orchestrated as a means to promote Japanese movies ahead of the bigger budget US releases. The local United cinema for example has something like 60% of their upcoming schedule over the next few months listed as Japanese produced movies, with the scraps being whats detailed above. The Chinese do the same thing with their movie industry, the difference is at least, they're honest about it when giving their reasons.

[American Oyaji]

The local United cinema for example has something like 60% of their upcoming schedule over the next few months listed as Japanese produced movies, with the scraps being whats detailed above. The Chinese do the same thing with their movie industry, the difference is at least, they're honest about it when giving their reasons.

Wow, it's amazing that GI Joe came out before Wolverine. Wolverine is about to be put out on DVD it's been so long. Or is it that they need to translate it to make sense for the Japanese audience?

Hmmmmm, has it gotten that bad?? I remember SW:Episode I came out maybe a month after it came out stateside I think. So do you think Toho is shooting themselves in the foot for the sake of Yamato damashii?

[FG Lurker]

Wow, it's amazing that GI Joe came out before Wolverine. Wolverine is about to be put out on DVD it's been so long. Or is it that they need to translate it to make sense for the Japanese audience?

Hmmmmm, has it gotten that bad?? I remember SW:Episode I came out maybe a month after it came out stateside I think. So do you think Toho is shooting themselves in the foot for the sake of Yamato damashii?

It really depends on the movie in question. Some movies are released here pretty close to the same time as they are in the US, some even at the same time. Titanic actually premiered here if memory serves.

I'm not sure how the release schedule is set but I would guess it includes things like this:

1) Movies that are expected to be blockbusters worldwide get released in Japan around the same time as the US releases.

2) Movies that seem likely to appeal to Japanese audiences (ie popular actors or stories that are known here) get released sometime soonish after the US release.

3) Movies that aren't really expected to do well here are released much later, released in limited theaters, go direct to DVD, or aren't ever translated.

4) Sleeper hits in the US are released waaaaay late here because often the movie hasn't even hit the translation que yet. Slumdog Millionaire was a good example of this.

[FG Lurker]

there's not a snowball's chance in hell I'm going to pay 1,800 yen

Quite a few theaters have started offering "late shows" with 1200yen admission. Besides being cheaper it's great as the theaters are often pretty empty. There's one place I go to that has no train service (attached to a big shopping center) and often the audience is less than 10 people.

[Kuang_Grade]

Yeah, this summer's movies in the US were spectacularly weak...The only decent one I saw this year was District 9, and that was good primarily because it was one of the few films I saw that was uniformly well put together on all levels and that you couldn't predict the end with 98% certainty after the first 5 minutes. But Sony doesn't even a list a Japan release date for it, although I guess that shouldn't too much of a surprise, even if it is fairly female friendly and the running time isn't 95% jive talking robots smashing each other...the action pieces are well done but don't overwhelm the overall story.

embedding is disabled but here's a link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6PDlMggROA

[Midwinter]

Yeah, this summer's movies in the US were spectacularly weak...The only decent one I saw this year was District 9, and that was good primarily because it was one of the few films I saw that was uniformly well put together on all levels and that you couldn't predict the end with 98% certainty after the first 5 minutes. But Sony doesn't even a list a Japan release date for it, although I guess that shouldn't too much of a surprise, even if it is fairly female friendly and the running time isn't 95% jive talking robots smashing each other...the action pieces are well done but don't overwhelm the overall story.

embedding is disabled but here's a link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6PDlMggROA

I am dying to see District 9, damn that looks soooo good. Everytime I wander past the cinema lately I poke my head in the door to see if there are any advertisements but so far I remain disappointed. I totally expect to have to watch that movie by "other" means

Yeah FGL, there are ways and means of seeing movies on the cheap. The post 9pm sessions here are only 1,000yen Sunday to Friday which is pretty bloody awesome. Certainly for the new releases that's a bargain, though I'd hazard a guess and say that most Japanese movies aren't even worth that lowered price of admission. Iron Man really surprised me last year with it's late summer release. When a movie about a millionaire playboy jetting about in a power suit gets a 4 month delayed release in Japan, you just have to stop and wonder if someone's doing this on purpose. I'd be curious to see the box office earnings here for that one as it would seem to be right up their local alley... so to speak.