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After reading this post on the Ghibli blog, lamenting the US box office return on Arrietty, i was curious about the history of anime theatrical releases in the US. The graph plots the total box office return for all anime released theatrically in the US, in terms of $100's per screen.

A few observations:

Anime theatrical releases in the US tend to be either small (less than 5% of theatres) or very small (less than 1% of theatres). Recent Ghibli releases have seen a wider release: Ponyo saw 20% and Arrietty is currently running at 35%. I think this backs up the claim that weight is behind the Ghibli releases. The returns on the Ghibli films are around $15,000 per screen, about 2x as much as other anime releases.

The Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, et al, thing was a fad, thankfully. Driven by merchandising, computer games, and a terrible television show the original theatrical release of Pokemon returned over $85million, however it was a very wide release – returning $30,000 per screen, not a significant amount more than the Ghibli releases. The Pokemon fad soon died, the returns on the sequels dropped hugely within the 2 years they were ran, despite still being wide releases (N.B. Pokemon is still very big in Japan - the 2011 film ranked 5th at the Japanese box office that year, that's amongst all films and not just anime).

If you scrub the Pokemon, et al, films from the top 10 grossing anime releases in the US, on the basis that they were a blip, the Ghibli films occupy the top 5 places with Arrietty being number 1 even though still on release. Early anime releases in the US saw huge returns on a per screen basis, but saw very very limited releases – 1 or 2 screens.

Compared to non-anime releases, on a per screen basis, the figures are very respectable. Cars 2 saw a per screen return of $46,500, having a wide release and huge campaign behind it it returned only 3x per screen than Ponyo. Most anime releases see between $5,000 and $15,000 per screen. There are some shockers: what were The Bigger Picture thinking with their 97 screen release of the One Piece movie? The eighth movie, of currently eleven, from a long running (over 500 episodes) somewhat obscure anime? The movie took just $7million in Japan, and failed spectacularly in the US taking less than $7,000 in total.

Satoshi Kon's films did reasonably well, probably aided by strong reviews. If i were to recommend any films from the above graph it would be his over all others (including the Ghibli stuff).

Those are my observations, i leave you to make your own mind up over the state of anime theatrical releases in the US. I think they're doing well. All figures sourced from Box Office Mojo.

Silly season... The awards are nothing but a hype machine for generating additional box office revenue. Hence the skew towards fourth quarter releases as these films are still on their box office run when nominees/awards are announced/given.

The Value of an Oscar.
What's an Oscar worth?

Data sourced from Box Office Mojo.

Felix (Newcastle trip 4/4)

Jude (Newcastle trip 4/4)

Hurworth-on-Tees (Newcastle trip 2/4)