The popular anime franchise ‘Dragon Ball’ has been around for several decades. The latest feature film, ‘Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero’ hailing from Toei studios in Japan, has become the newest hit films in the United States. This not only continues to show how strong the animation genre is amongst audiences, it also shows how large the fanbase is for anime in particular.
‘Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero’ scored $20.1 million Friday through Sunday. That’s almost double what ‘Beast’, a survival thriller starring Idris Elba, earned as the only other new release to crack the Weekend Box Office Top 5. ‘Beast’, which could almost be considered animation, or at least tokusatsu, for featuring a cgi lion, clawed up $11.6 million.
As it was a slow summer’s weekend the remainder of the Weekend Box Office Top 5 are holdovers.
‘Bullet Train’, starring Brad Pitt in an adaptation of the Japanese novel MariaBeetle, slowed down into third braking at $8 million.
Tom Cruise cruises in with ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ at fourth with $5.9 million. Trailing in that vortex is animated comic book movie ‘DC League of Super-Pets’ with $5.7 million.
Will ‘Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero’ be favored again next weekend?
There’s not a lot of competition for the remainder of the summer. George Miller, best known for directing the Mad Max films, brings fantasy romance ‘Three Thousand Years of Longing’ onto screens soon. However, it is generating little buzz after a lackluster debut on the festival circuit. It is also aimed for streaming, illustrating once again how day-and-date releases are not good for turning a profit on a movie.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE TOP 5 (August 19 – 21, 2022)
- ‘Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero’ – $20.1 million – animated (debut)
- ‘Beast’ – $11.6 million – action-adventure (debut)
- ‘Bullet Train’ – $8 million – action-adventure (drop $5.4 million, 40% down)
- ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ – $5.9 million – war (drop $1.2 million, 17% down)
- ‘DC League of Super-Pets’ – $5.7 million – animated (drop $1.3 million, 19% down)
Total for the Weekend Box Office Top 5 comes to $51.3 million. This is $13 million increase, a gain of 34%, over last weekend’s total of $38.3 million.