Top Gun Maverick claims the top spot at the Japanese box office as Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero slips to second.
As reported by Japanese film site Eiga, Tom Cruise's high-flying blockbuster managed to claim first place at the country's box office rankings this weekend, knocking Dragon Ball Super into the runner-up position. Maverick made its Japanese debut four weeks ago and is still going strong, having pulled in a total of over 5 billion yen, or about $36.7 million USD in the region. Super Hero, meanwhile, crossed the 1 billion yen (about $7 million USD) line during its second week in theaters. The top three was rounded out by another anime movie, the rom-com Quintessential Quintuplets The Movie, which managed a late comeback during its fifth week in theaters, knocking Shin Ultraman into the fourth spot.
Top Gun Maverick's staying power in the Japanese box office is no surprise given that the film has become a worldwide hit, and is currently pulling in numbers previously only seen with big tentpole franchises, such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. Maverick's domestic box-office intake is currently sitting at $466.2 million and is closing in on $900 million worldwide. The film finished in third place in the United States this week, just behind Jurassic World Dominion and Lightyear. In Japan, the movie was promoted through an unexpected crossover with the singing-horse-girl anime, Uma Musume.
While Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero has performed well compared to most other anime releases, it is still lagging behind the performance of the three previous Dragon Ball movies, especially 2018's Dragon Ball Super: Broly, which eventually pulled in over 13 billion yen worldwide and went on to become one of the highest grossing anime movies of all time. Of course, several factors could be used to explain Super Hero's slightly soft performance in Japan, including the movie's last-second delay due to a hacking incident at Toei Animation, or the lack of a concurrently running Dragon Ball TV anime to help promote it. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero will be released in the United States by Crunchyroll on Aug. 19.
The Quintessential Quintuplets: The Movie serves as the finale for the popular anime series, which ran for two seasons. The show and the movie are both based on the manga of the same name by Negi Haruba.
Shin Ultraman is a theatrical reboot of Tsuburaya Productions' beloved tokusatsu hero. The new movie was directed by Shin Godzilla co-director Shinji Higuchi and written by Neon Genesis Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno, and has been one of the most successful Japanese movies of the year so far, having pulled in over 3.56 billion yen since its release on May 13. Details about the film's international release have yet to be announced.
Source: Eiga, via Crunchyroll
