How much did Godzilla 2000 gross?

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Pkmatrix
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How much did Godzilla 2000 gross?

Post by Pkmatrix »

I was looking through the box office returns listed on the main site, and was a little confused by Godzilla 2000's entry:
Release Date: December 11th, 1999 (Japan)
Budget: ¥1,000,000,000 / $8,300,000 (Rough Figure)
Attendance: 2,000,000 (Japan)
Total: ¥1,650,000,000 / $15,000,000 (Japan, Rough Figure)

Release Date: August 18th, 2000 (US)
Budget: $1,000,000 (US)
Opening Weekend: $4,407,720 (US, 2,111 Theaters)
Total: $10,037,390 (US)
So...did G2K gross a total of $15 Million worldwide or $25 Million worldwide? If it's the latter, then that would make G2K the most profitable of the Millennium Godzilla movies, I think. That makes sense, considering the International release, but usually I see people citing GMK as the most financially successful Millennium film so I'm wondering if I'm just misreading this.

If it made $15 Million worldwide, though, then...wow. That would mean it did incredibly poorly in Japan...

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Re: How much did Godzilla 2000 gross?

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NSZ wrote:It made $15 Million in Japan and $10 Million in the US.

So I would guess $25 Million would be the worldwide gross.
Okay, so I'm not crazy. Based on what I see here, of the movies released between 1984 and 2004 (excluding Z'98), G2K grossed the highest at US$25 Million followed by a three-way tie between GvM'92, Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla, and GMK at about $20 Million each. It really makes Megaguirus' low return stand out sitting between G2K and GMK.

EDIT: Oh! Thanks, by the way! ^_^

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Re: How much did Godzilla 2000 gross?

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Legion1979 wrote:
Pkmatrix wrote: If it made $15 Million worldwide, though, then...wow. That would mean it did incredibly poorly in Japan...
Yeah, but you're using American standards to come to that conclusion. Godzilla vs Mothra was the highest grossing Godzilla movie ever and the highest grossing Japanese film the year it came out. But it still only made around $20,000,000 or so. That's nothing compared to what American films make over here.
Oh, no, I was thinking much more simply than that! :oops:

The reason I was confused was because I'd looked at another movie (it may have been RoG, don't feel like checking right now) that listed Japanese (Initial Distribution), Total, and US Release, so I thought at first the G2K entry was Japanese (and Total Worldwide) and US Only. By that logic, I thought it made $5 Million in Japan and $10 Million in America (for a total of $15 Million), which made no sense and thus the thread. :oops:

$15 Million for Japan isn't bad at all, from what I can tell. That puts it only a little below Godzilla vs. Super-Mechagodzilla and Godzilla vs. Destroyah, both of which I understand did well.

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Re: How much did Godzilla 2000 gross?

Post by kamilleblu »

Reviewing over these box office numbers, it's no wonder why Toho wanted to give Godzilla a rest period.

GMK: $20,000,000
Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla: $16,000,000
Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.: $12,000,000
Godzilla: Final Wars:$12,000,000 (Budget: $19,500,000)!

With each release they made 4,000,000 less than the last, that is not good business.

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Re: How much did Godzilla 2000 gross?

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Legion1979 wrote:BTW, be careful where you get your box office numbers. Wikipedia states that Space Godzilla made more than Destroyah, about equal to what Mothra made. Umm, no.
I'm getting my numbers from Toho Kingdom, and that's what TK says:
Godzilla vs. Mothra wrote:Release Date: December 12th, 1992 (Japan)
Attendance: 4,200,000 (Japan)
Distribution Earning: ¥2,220,000,000 / $20,000,000 (Japan, Rough Figure)
Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla wrote:Release Date: December 10th, 1994 (Japan)
Budget: ¥1,000,000,000 / $10,300,000 (Rough Figure)
Attendance: 3,400,000 (Japan)
Distribution Earning: ¥1,650,000,000 / $20,000,000 (Japan, Rough Figure)
Godzilla vs. Destroyah wrote:Release Date: December 9th, 1995 (Japan)
Budget: ¥1,000,000,000 / $10,000,000 (Rough Figure)
Attendance: 4,000,000 (Japan)
Distribution Earning: ¥2,000,000,000 / $18,000,000 (Japan, Rough Figure)
Do you have any reason to believe this is wrong?

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Pkmatrix
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Re: How much did Godzilla 2000 gross?

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Legion1979 wrote:
Pkmatrix wrote: Do you have any reason to believe this is wrong?
I always read that the box office went down little by little after Mothra but went up with Destroyah, which was the second highest-grossing film of the Heisei series. But TK has Space Godzilla tied with Mothra? I'm sorry, I don't know where TK got their info, but I don't think that's right.

How do the distribution earnings correlate with the estimated box office gross? Because those numbers seem weird. Space Godzilla's are less than either Mothra or Destroyah, but the estimated box office for that one is tied with Mothra, which would put it as one of the top grossers of this series. Again, that's not correct.

I mean, how could the attendance for Space Godzilla be 800,000 below Mothra but the box office be about equal????
A mistake, maybe?

I took GvM'92's total gross in US$ ($20 Million) and divided it by its attendance to get about $4.76 per ticket. When I multiply that by the number of tickets sold for Godzilla vs. Super-Mechagodzilla, I get around $18 Million, which is consistent with what Toho Kingdom has. When I do the same for Space Godzilla, though, I come up with about $16 Million. Maybe it's a typo on TK? Who posted those numbers up in the first place? Maybe he/she can double-check.

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Re: How much did Godzilla 2000 gross?

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Legion1979 wrote:
Yeah, but you're using American standards to come to that conclusion. Godzilla vs Mothra was the highest grossing Godzilla movie ever
Wait, I thought that was KKvG?
In Japan, this film has the highest box office attendance figures of all of the Godzilla series to date. It sold 11.2 million tickets during its initial theatrical run accumulating ¥350,000,000 in grosses.[14] After 2 theatrical re-releases in 1970 and 1977 respectively, it has a lifetime figure of 12,550,000 tickets sold.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_vs._Godzilla
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Re: How much did Godzilla 2000 gross?

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Black Lion wrote:
Legion1979 wrote:
Yeah, but you're using American standards to come to that conclusion. Godzilla vs Mothra was the highest grossing Godzilla movie ever
Wait, I thought that was KKvG?
In Japan, this film has the highest box office attendance figures of all of the Godzilla series to date. It sold 11.2 million tickets during its initial theatrical run accumulating ¥350,000,000 in grosses.[14] After 2 theatrical re-releases in 1970 and 1977 respectively, it has a lifetime figure of 12,550,000 tickets sold.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_vs._Godzilla
It's the highest when adjusted for inflation. If it were released nowadays it would've grossed at least ¥12,000,000,000 ($130 Million), assuming tickets cost $12 each ($16 is probably more realistic, meaning more like $170 Million).

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Re: How much did Godzilla 2000 gross?

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Distribution earning is what the distributor made minus the theater's cut, which itself can differ based on location (similar to today where 3D surcharge makes tracking attendance to gross hard for a single formula). This is what Japan used to report, which is a more honest total (in seeing if a film made money) but they changed to a more traditional total gross.

In terms of comparing box office success... use yen. Don't use dollars. One thing you have to understand with the dollar figures is that it's at the mercy of inflation and conversion. If you are simply tracking in US dollars, a film might make the same at the box office in Japan but come out millions above or below a film made a year later just because of that.

Besides, what's important to the Japanese studio is yen, and the total made overseas in this case doesn't mean a hill of beans to the studio as they will often sell the film usually for a flat rate and don't get a % of the gross.
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Re: How much did Godzilla 2000 gross?

Post by StriderSubzero »

Are these typical film gross numbers for Japanese movies? I'm not naive and I know that American movies are way higher budgets, and gross much, much more, but I'm not sure why that is exactly. Can anyone clear this up a bit?

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Re: How much did Godzilla 2000 gross?

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Arbok wrote:Distribution earning is what the distributor made minus the theater's cut, which itself can differ based on location (similar to today where 3D surcharge makes tracking attendance to gross hard for a single formula). This is what Japan used to report, which is a more honest total (in seeing if a film made money) but they changed to a more traditional total gross.

In terms of comparing box office success... use yen. Don't use dollars. One thing you have to understand with the dollar figures is that it's at the mercy of inflation and conversion. If you are simply tracking in US dollars, a film might make the same at the box office in Japan but come out millions above or below a film made a year later just because of that.

Besides, what's important to the Japanese studio is yen, and the total made overseas in this case doesn't mean a hill of beans to the studio as they will often sell the film usually for a flat rate and don't get a % of the gross.
True, it's just harder for me as an American to grasp how much money was made considering the differences in how US Dollars and Yen are denominated. ^_^() It IS interesting to look at the ticket sales, though. The steady fall in ticket sales from the '50s/'60s to 2004 is a little depressing, although I do understand that's in part due to the gradual overall fall in Theater attendance over that time.

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Re: How much did Godzilla 2000 gross?

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StriderSubzero wrote:Are these typical film gross numbers for Japanese movies? I'm not naive and I know that American movies are way higher budgets, and gross much, much more, but I'm not sure why that is exactly. Can anyone clear this up a bit?
You can compare them to the top earners for the year as a starting point:

http://www.tohokingdom.com/box_office/r ... olders.htm

General rule of thumb for the post Showa films:

- Godzilla vs. Mothra, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla, Godzilla vs. Destoroyah and GODZILLA did great at the box office.

- The Return of Godzilla, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah and GMK did good.

Everything else? Meh to not so hot. Biollante got a lot of flack for its under performance for example, but the movie did better or on par with almost all of the Millennium films.
Pkmatrix wrote:True, it's just harder for me as an American to grasp how much money was made considering the differences in how US Dollars and Yen are denominated. ^_^() It IS interesting to look at the ticket sales, though. The steady fall in ticket sales from the '50s/'60s to 2004 is a little depressing, although I do understand that's in part due to the gradual overall fall in Theater attendance over that time.
Japanese theater industry in general collapsed in the 1970's. What allowed Toho to have the iron fist grasp on the theater market in the country they have today as well. Japanese productions were really, really hurting there for a long time but are making a recovery now (it's more common to see a Japanese film top the box office for the year for example). That said, yes, the Godzilla films have really dropped in their box office, so it's not hard to understand why Toho hasn't done anything with the property lately. Throw in the fact that the King Kong remake and latest Gamera movie disappointed, and it looks like the country as a whole is kind of over the kaiju genre. Or so it seems... get our first test with Pacific Rim and the new Godzilla for the new decade if that is still the case.

Yeah I really wish there was MORE data out there for box office in Japan. A lot of modern films are getting more reporting, which is awesome, but there isn't much out there for the older ones. Hell, even for modern films finding the budget for a production is often hard.
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