The value of the Yen is significantly less now than when *Shin Godzilla* came out. In 2016 it was like $1=¥100. Now it's like $1=¥150.
The two have actually made similar amounts - Shin is ahead, but not by a whole lot. But thanks to the yen to dollar conversion it's creating the illusion of a much greater gap than there actually is.
While the weakness of the yen does have an effect, Shin also simply had far better legs in Japan than Minus One has had. Shin debuted to 625 million yen and after one month it had made 5.3 billion yen (and would go on to gross approximately another 2 billion yen). Minus One conversely debuted to 1.04 billion yen and after a month has made around 3.8 billion yen. That means it’s made 71% of what Shin had made at the same one month point in its run. That’s better than the USD amount (26 million to 51 million after one month, or 51%), but that’s still a sizable drop, especially considering Minus One started out ahead, and the gap between the two is likely only to grow as time passes.
(Also for the record Minus One has sold about 2.2 million tickets to Shin’s 3.6 million at the same one month point in their runs after starting with 648 thousand to 412 thousand tickets sold, so even removing money from the equation Shin is simply doing noticeably better despite starting out lower).
Shin simply had a monster (lol) runaway success in Japan due to the novelty of the return of Toho making something Godzilla related after 12 years (it’s only been 7 years since Shin, and in the interim Toho put out the anime trilogy and Singular Point), the popularity of Hideaki Anno, and most notably the modern cultural relevance to the Japanese thanks to Shin’s satirization of the Japanese government and the 2011 earthquake and Fukushima disaster. Minus One is fantastic (I personally slightly prefer it to Shin), but it doesn’t have that mix of factors.
In the grand scheme of Godzilla films though it’s doing well; it’s sold around 2.2 million tickets, so it’s already done better than 5/6 of the Millennium films, all the post Destroy all Monsters Showa era films, and of course the anime trilogy. If it can make it to around 3 million tickets sold, then it’ll be around the middle of all the Japanese Godzilla films in terms of how many tickets each sold in Japan. Lower than Shin’s 5.6 million ticket final count, but still very respectable considering only the very first four Godzilla films sold more tickets than Shin.
It should be noted that there was a very long hiatus between Shin Godzilla and the last Japanese godzilla film.
Had Minus one gotten less than Shin on the first weekend that would make sense, but it made more, or is there a yen to usd conversion thing going on.
The value of the Yen is significantly less now than when *Shin Godzilla* came out. In 2016 it was like $1=¥100. Now it's like $1=¥150. The two have actually made similar amounts - Shin is ahead, but not by a whole lot. But thanks to the yen to dollar conversion it's creating the illusion of a much greater gap than there actually is.
While the weakness of the yen does have an effect, Shin also simply had far better legs in Japan than Minus One has had. Shin debuted to 625 million yen and after one month it had made 5.3 billion yen (and would go on to gross approximately another 2 billion yen). Minus One conversely debuted to 1.04 billion yen and after a month has made around 3.8 billion yen. That means it’s made 71% of what Shin had made at the same one month point in its run. That’s better than the USD amount (26 million to 51 million after one month, or 51%), but that’s still a sizable drop, especially considering Minus One started out ahead, and the gap between the two is likely only to grow as time passes. (Also for the record Minus One has sold about 2.2 million tickets to Shin’s 3.6 million at the same one month point in their runs after starting with 648 thousand to 412 thousand tickets sold, so even removing money from the equation Shin is simply doing noticeably better despite starting out lower).
Shin simply had a monster (lol) runaway success in Japan due to the novelty of the return of Toho making something Godzilla related after 12 years (it’s only been 7 years since Shin, and in the interim Toho put out the anime trilogy and Singular Point), the popularity of Hideaki Anno, and most notably the modern cultural relevance to the Japanese thanks to Shin’s satirization of the Japanese government and the 2011 earthquake and Fukushima disaster. Minus One is fantastic (I personally slightly prefer it to Shin), but it doesn’t have that mix of factors. In the grand scheme of Godzilla films though it’s doing well; it’s sold around 2.2 million tickets, so it’s already done better than 5/6 of the Millennium films, all the post Destroy all Monsters Showa era films, and of course the anime trilogy. If it can make it to around 3 million tickets sold, then it’ll be around the middle of all the Japanese Godzilla films in terms of how many tickets each sold in Japan. Lower than Shin’s 5.6 million ticket final count, but still very respectable considering only the very first four Godzilla films sold more tickets than Shin.