ポケモン Movie Money (OR Squirtle Sequel Specie)

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In honor of the Transformer DVD's release today, the fact that I spent at least an hour today sending messages from Optimus Prime, and being too upset over 松坂 大輔, to watch baseball, I figure now's a good time to explore the latter half of Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

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South Korea, Mainland China and Japan were far-and away the largest non-English markets for Michael Bay's Transformers, and in that order. My surprise at this has three layers of diminishing affiliation to anthropomorphic automobiles:
1) Transformers is based on Japanese toys, the cartoon had more iterations in Japan than it did in the US, and the Japanese localization also roped in old voice actor[s?], yet in Japan it grossed less than half of either Pirates or Potter. In the US, it outgrossed them both.
2) For some reason I assumed Japan was a more sophisticated movie marketplace than Korea. However, through October 7th, the Japanese box office is averaging ≈$14M[1] a week for 21 movies, and RoK $16M on a whopping 60 movies.
3) 'Pokémon 2007' was the #6 movie in Japan when Transformers opened. All told it's made ≈$42M, a good $8M more than Transformers grossed there.

Even considering residual hype from the 2006 release of Nintendo DS PokéMon games, such revenue seemed really high; at the time it was Japan's biggest home-grown hit.[2] I went back to see how the other films in the series did.

[3]

Guess it's that's not that weird after all.

Next time, 宮崎 駿 v ゴジラ, the Fantastic Four Double-Feature in Korea, Stomp-ing the Yard in Japan, and Tonic Google Presentations.

[1]US Dollars (exchange rates perplex me). FTR: the PRC's weekly average is 9 movies and 45.8M 圆/圓
[2]Since surpassed by Hero, an adaptation of the same-named TV series
[3] Grosses 2003-2007 are from Japan only.