Today is a good day to be a fan of anime. Because as this article title proudly proclaimed, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero is the No.1 movie at the Domestic Box Office. It made about $20 million dollars in its opening weekend, and to be fair, that number might be adjusted and go up due to how the projections don’t fully take in the Sunday movie numbers. Either way though, the film is definitely going to be No.1, surpassing all the other movies in theaters right now, including a new film that starred Idris Elba. Guess a dragon beats a lion after all…
But there’s a couple of other elements here that can’t be ignored. Some reports are stating that in its first day in theaters, the movie beat the then record gross of Pokemon The First Movie when it came out over 20 years ago. So it was already off to a great start. Just as important though, the previous Dragon Ball movie in Broly grossed $20.2 million dollars, but that was over the course of 5 days. Whereas this one had $20 million in three days. Thus a better score and average per day.
Another thing to note here is that Crunchyroll didn’t hold back on the welcome wagon for Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. Putting it out in 4000 theaters across the United States. That’s the biggest anime rollout in history so far, and proof of just how confident this movie would do. The No.1 ranking proves that their gamble was worth it.
Curiously, the film didn’t beat Broly in Japan, but it did in the US, showing that the US fanbase is more than happy to go and turnout for a new film because they desperately want more content from the franchise. Which many hope this film’s success will bring.
Overall, this is just another feather in the cap of the “anime boom” that has been going on for years now. Because between the big movie releases like this, the Demon Slayer movie Mugen Train, My Hero Academia World Heroes Mission, and others, people are tuning in for them. Furthermore, all sorts of services are trying to get their own anime titles so that they can bring that fanbase to their platforms. Dragon Ball is still one of the biggest names in anime, that’s not going to change for some time, so having this one succeed will likely send a ripple effect throughout the anime universe and inspire others to go like this.
As for what’s next for Dragon Ball, that’s hard to say. The hope again is that a new anime will arrive and tell of the events of the manga right now. But there’s no official announcement of that just yet.
Source: Exhibitor Relations
