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Japanese Box Office, July 5–6: HanaDan Stays at #1

posted on by Egan Loo
Boys Over Flowers: Final takes in 756M yen; Speed Racer opens at #5

Yasuharu Ishii's live-action film finale based on Yōko Kamio's Boys Over Flowers (Hana Yori Dango) shōjo romantic comedy manga stayed at #1 at the Japanese box office during the July 5-6 weekend. In its second weekend, Boys Over Flowers: Final took in an additional 756 million yen (about US$7.3 million) for a gross-to-date total of 2.622 billion yen (US$25.1 million). Over the first nine days of the movie's release, 2,167,425 people saw the film. The second week's box office total was 75% of the opening week's total.

The movie serves as a finale for Ishii's two hit live-action television series and one television special that were also based on the manga. All four of these live-action incarnations starred Mao Inoue as the strong-willed girl named Tsukushi who perseveres at an elitist academy and in life after high school. (The manga was previously adapted into a 1995 live-action film that is otherwise unrelated to Ishii and Inoue's version.) A new manga volume was published in the same week as the film's opening, and it dropped from #1 to #3 on the weekly comic rankings in its second week. Viz Media released the manga and anime versions in North America. The manga has also been adapted into live-action series in Taiwan and soon in South Korea.

By contrast to Boys Over Flowers: Final, the Wachowski Brothers' live-action Speed Racer film opened at #5 during the July 5-6 weekend with 105 million yen (US$1 million). Before the Japanese opening, the producers at Warner Brothers had hoped that the Japanese box office would make up for the disappointing returns in the United States earlier this summer.

Source: Kogyo Tsushinsha, Variety Japan

Image © Yōko Kamio/Shueisha Margaret Comics


This article has a follow-up: Japanese Box Office, July 12–13: HanaDan's 3rd #1 Week (2008-07-21 15:06)
follow-up of Japanese Box Office, June 28–29: HanaDan Final at #1
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