With WALL-E being screened in Japan starting 5th December, do people here think it will do well?
It seems like the sort of film that the Japanese will fall in love with (given the fact that they love Miyazaki’s anime for example).
How well did previous Pixar releases fare in Japan compared to, say, the US?
WALL-E is an instant success. It will fare grandiosely, and theaters across the island will be mysteriously silent.
I bet it will. Robots are a huge thing over there, and so are kinda melancholy stories like this. The Japanese moviegoers should love it. ^^
Yup, as Netbug009 said, it’s got two of the things that the Japanese love the most- robots and love. I’m pretty sure (and hopeful) that it’s going to be very popular over there.
I think it’ll fit right in…lets hope many people go to see it over and over and over and over…
I’m betting WALL-E will do great in Japan!
Robots + Cute = Japanese Success
The Japanese love robots and anything cute so I’m predicting it will do quite well. I can just imagine all the Japanese girls saying “kawaii!” when watching the movie.
they probably gonna like eve the best 
Check out the “Wall-E Box Office” thread, covering most of page17, we talk about Pixar films in Japan and robots and sci-fi and anime and ‘consensus’. I would guess it will do between $35-75M, because Pixar films have done between $13(Cars)-102M(Nemo) or so in box office there. Summertime films do more business in our country, and I have no idea what sort of competition it will be going up against this week.
I choose all of the above. I agree with you all. I just came back from watching WALL-E. I watched it in English on Friday night and afterwards you got a sense from the audience this movie had everything for everybody. The kids, the singles, the high school girls, and definitely the couples liked WALL-E. I might watch this movie with the Sunday mass. I’m not talking church goers, but the mass of Japanese people who have only Sundays off and see how they feel. There’s gonna be a lot of repeat viewers watching this movie. That’s my gut feeling of course, but definitely I’m gonna watch WALL-E one more time on the big screen.
WALL-E is going up against two Japanese movies and they’re weak.
We will all know within a matter of days how well it will do in Japan. [Edit: it did a disappointing $5.5M on the first weekend, and added another $7M on the first full week, so the answer is: mediocre performance in Japan] Here are some results in that market for the past year:
screendaily.com/ScreenDailyA … ryID=42279
Dark Knight $14M
Hancock $28M
Indiana Jones $62M
Iron Man $9M
Films released this time of year in Japan do about 2/3 the summertime business. However Nemo was released on Dec. 6th 2004 and made $102M there, so maybe Pixar knows what it’s doing. They passed over a summertime release to avoid conflict with the animation master’s latest work.
Do we have any more updates on how well WALL-E is doing in Japan?
We will know if WALL-E will be number one again for the third weekend. Yahoo Japan ranked WALL-E as number one for the second week.
event.movies.yahoo.co.jp/newyear … /kogyo.php
I went last Friday night on the last showing of the day. The audience before had a large group walking out touched by the movie. You can see in their eyes because it was in Japanese. All women from what I could see. This movie worker dressed in a suit took digital pictures of the audience walking out. The show I went to was in Japanese subtitle. It was the last ever show in English. Not many people were there. The rest of WALL-E showings will be in Japanese in my area.
In its third weekend, WALL-E is going up against two popular Japanese animated movies, a live action children movie, that new Keanu Reeves movie, and that Leonardo DiCaprio movie.
My money is on WALL-E to be number one again for the third weekend because the WALL-E merchandise is practically sold out almost everywhere. At Toys R Us today, WALL-E merchandise was picked through. All big ticket items sold out. And there were lots of disbelieved shoppers looking at what was left over surrounding this empty, gutted WALL-E space. It was kind of sad to be honest, but people are hungry for WALL-E so to speak.
That’s great news. 
Thanks for that Japanese update, Rey!
It’s good to know that merchandise is being sold out. I just knew the Japanese would fall in love with our little robot friend! Maybe that was one of the reasons why they released the movie so close to Christmas - so the merch would sell well. And let’s keep our fingers crossed that WALL•E is number one for the 3rd week in a row!
Do you think you’d be able to give us a summary of Japanese critics’ thoughts on the movie? Or even blogs from the Japanese movie goer? Thanks if you choose to do this.
Thanks Rey, for your report.
If you see it again in Japanese (rather than subtitled) I’d love to hear your report on it. I might buy the R2 DVD when it comes out… but then again, there’s not a lot of dialogue in the movie anyway (though it would be interesting to see if they change or tweak Wall-E or Eve’s voice, or just the humans’).
Interesting to hear Wall-E toys are being snapped up. Interestingly, “Speed Racer” bombed horribly at the US Box Office, but sales of merchandise were pretty good from what I understand (Similarly, for “Cars”, while the movie did very well at the box office, the merchandising for it was through the roof).
It’s strange to have the Pixar delayed until winter for Japan, but I assume it was to avoid going against “Ponyo” since Pixar and Ghibli have a close relationship. Is Ponyo still in theatres there in Sendai?
By “that Leonardo DiCaprio” movie", do you mean Revoloutionary Road? If so, two Tommy Newman-scored movies will be going against each other…
Any Japan “Wall-E” stories (wide shows, publicity stunts, marketing, theatre reports, thoughts of friends who have seen it, reviews, blogs etc would certainly be appriciated!
No problem rachelcakes1985 and miafka. Thanks for waiting. I got three articles in English from Japan about WALL-E.
The Daily Yomiuri.
yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/ar … Y16001.htm
The Japan Times.
search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ … 205a2.html
The Asahi Weekly.
asahi.com/english/Herald-asa … 20062.html
We have blogs in Japan, but they are weak. Most of the Blogs in Japan are about their dogs. I am serious. Let me look around. I might find a good blog about WALL-E or Pixar.
miafka “Ponyo” has made 15,400,000,000 yen as of December 15, 2008. Thats roughly 170,000,000 US dollars. It’s still showing in theaters.
varietyjapan.com/news/movie_ … gyv1d.html
The Leonardo movie title here in Japan is called World of Rise.
It goes without saying that a Pixar feature would do well in any country - it is so common it becomes not an opinion, but a hardcore fact that is a hundred percent accurate.
However, I have actually watched some Japanese films myself, and I must say, the Japanese love to give children premature ideas about life, sooner than they should be allowed to.
For example. Most of the animated movies in Japan, or as they called it, “animé,” contained very gloomy matters. Even when dealing with a kids film, the creators have to go and put very dark story lines near the end of the movie. Not that kind of dark the WALL-E movie has when the captain learns about the hidden conspiracy, but the kind of dark that scares the children out of their seats, wet their pants, and would have got the parents placing law suits were they ever Americans.
Japanese people have enjoyed this sort of dark, grisly story lines so much that they do not place any concerns on their children being frightened a little bit, because they aren’t frightened - it has become so common of a genre in Japan that it is something that was adapted by the kids one generation after another.
Yes, the Japanese love robots - but we are talking about Gundam Seed, not that recent artificial intelligence invention many girls dig. They love huge action explosive sequences, that is why Transformers did so well in Japan, because it is cold turkey for the CGI-addict.
WALL-E, on the other hand, is a lighthearted plot that focuses more on the story lines - or at least, it tried to. It lacks that grimy thrill most Japanese would go for, especially when those gloomy scenes are ruined by comical humor, which is very fascinating for us, but under the perspective of a typical Japanese whose country screens hardcore action dramas as common as our mothers do their laundries, it is somewhat of a disappointment in the future. They might not realize it during their first watch when the same effect Transformers used apply the illusion of entertainment to their minds, but as soon as they watch it in the 20th or 30th time on DVD, someone would notice it does not have as much kick as their usual drug dosage.
Transformers was so entertaining because there were tons of freaking awesome CGI effects, but the unfortunate factor is - there is no deep story lines. Boy meets girl, boy meets robot, boy saves the day. Wow.
WALL-E is much better, thankfully to the great story it has. We move on to the second kick the Japanese desires; romance and love.
In my recent commentary, if you have felt compelled enough to hear it, I talked about how EVE acts more like a mother towards WALL-E than a lover; especially with WALL-E acting less mature and more innocent as a child would than EVE was (acting). We get some parts of the film when she lectures him like a parent rather than reacting to his actions how a lover/girlfriend would.
But there are some insanely romantic scenes that are really sweet and, thus, romantic. Granted, but that is why I am saying that it would do well in Japan, but not better than the other romantic comedies made by the filmmakers in the country, because they have seen it all.
My Wife Is A Gangster (yes, I know technically, it is a Korean film, but the Japanese have made their own version as well), an action-romantic comedy, bore much resemblances with WALL-E. Being a Korean film, I feel that the Japanese must have at least watched it once. And with the sequels that comes after it, it becomes a common genre, too common to be ignored when one watches WALL-E. The story line is cliched - boy meets tough girl, boy fails to impress tough girl at first, tough girl expresses her caring side, girl becomes weak throughout the adventure, boy touches girl and gets her to like him.
As I said, it would do well, but in order to be a box office hit (if they have box offices), Andrew must go up a notch. He must reorganize the movie to a hardcore emotional flick that would really grip all’s heart, even those with hardened ones.
That is my two cents on WALL-E’s impact on the Japanese. Ominous Flare, signing off.
Rey,
Thanks for the newspaper links, though I’m curious what the Japanese reviewers thought of it as well.
Thanks for the box office ranking site too.
varietyjapan.com/news/movie_ … gyv1d.html
Good to see Ponyo on top, but… Hana Yori Dango as #2? More than Indiana Jones? O…kay…
By the way, I wonder how they’ll compute “Wall-E” for the rankings on that site, since technically it’s a “2008” movie but was released less than a month before the end of the year. I wonder if they’ll include 2009 ticket receipts or only the 2008 numbers, as it’s kind of going between two calendar years…
Also, have you heard if the larger DVD Soft shops that sell imports have the R1 Wall-E DVDs on the shelves yet? It’d be pretty bad to have them for sale at HMV the same time it’s in theatres (though of course it wouldn’t be dubbed or subtitled).
Anyway, thanks! And please feel free to keep posting any more stuff about Wall-E in Japan. It’s the last major territory where the film has just come out, and inquiring minds are curious! 
Interesting commentary, Dragon of Omnipotency.
We’ll see what happens and how Wall-E does in Japan over the holiday period…
Well, I’ve been posting weekly box office for the past two weeks in the post immediately before yours, without making a new post. It seems disappointing to me, was hoping it would do better. I guess #1 is something, but the box office is only about a tenth for the opening weekend compared to here, in a country with half the population.
But these reviews, which cover a swath of opinions, are comparable to what we’ve seen here and in Australia. Perhaps this weekend and the next two will afford most people the chance to see it. Thx Rey for the crowd report and reviews!
Wall•E current box office in Japan: $12.5M from Dec. 5-14th.
Edit: 3rd week box is $4.5M, am I seeing the wrong numbers? Because there seems to be a lot of hoopla otherwise in this thread.