Playing arm chair quarterback (appropriate since NCAA football started last night), just a few ideas on the difference in grosses. --Pacific Rim has a strong Chinese connection in the form of one of the Jaegers (Crimson Typhoon) as well as it's second half taking place in Hong Kong. --Japanese box office remains much more depressed than the Chinese box office. Which makes sense as the Chinese economy continues to outpace Japan's, and Japan has a much smaller population of filmgoers. For reference, in it's opening week in China, PR sold about $46 million to be in the first place spot. PR debuted in Japan in the 6th spot with $3.04 million. World War Z opened the same week and got second place with... $3.38 million. So even the movies which do "well" in Japan do not contribute much to worldwide grosses. There's just not enough eyeballs sometimes. --Pacific Rim is based on two genres which were born in Japan (Super Robot and daikaiju), but does not have any brand recognition or franchise ties. If you think the US is bad about branding, Japan is even worse. If this film had been called, say, Super Robot Wars: Pacific Rim, it would have done better based on the name alone (Super Robot Wars being a popular series of Super Robot crossover video games). In any event I still think we will see a sequel to PR somewhere down the road. Other than PR, I am disappointed that Turbo failed to find an audience, because it looks adorable. Especially since Planes got middle of the road reviews but will still get a sequel because of the Power Of Pixar. Very pleased with the BO for Man Of Steel because I really enjoyed it. After finally seeing Dispicable Me, I can see why DM2 made so much money; it's just such a great set up for an animated story. Surprised about WWZ of course (have not seen it, though). But the biggest surprise has got to be the combination of The Purge and The Conjuring; I have heard good word of mouth on both, and they both sort of flew under the radar and made some good coin -- a real feat considering how packed Summer '13 was. So I am very much looking forward to seeing both of them, even if the latter foolishly did not include the Megadeth classic "The Conjuring" on it's soundtrack. *wink* Thanks for the link Ed!
On Thursday, August 29, 2013 4:24:45 PM UTC-4, Edward Crosby wrote: > I'm still shocked that Pacific Rim did so well in China. I would have > thought for sure it would have done a lot better in Japan than China. > > http://io9.com/biggest-box-office-hits-and-misses-of-summer-2013-1223218227 > > ---------------------------------------- > Have a Better One, > Edward Crosby > http://about.me/edwardcrosby > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Unique Geek" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/theuniquegeek. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
