Kyoto Animation’s acclaimed Violet Evergarden: The Movie anime passed the 2 billion yen mark (equivalent to $19.2 million USD) last weekend. As of Sunday, fans had purchased over 1.3 million tickets to see the movie running all across Japan. The film ranked just outside the top 10 movies as it comes to its 12th weekend. The film will add more theaters to its showing list starting December 11th. The film premiered in Japan on September 18th and ranked number 2 throughout its opening weekend. Violet Evergarden: The Movie was the first anime film in Japan to open in Dolby Cinemas.
Kyoto Animation had postponed the premiere of the film earlier this year due to the concerns of the COVID pandemic. Violet Evergarden: The Movie was originally supposed to premiere back on the 24th of April, which in itself was a pushed-back date from January 10th. However, the world premiere of the anime was able to go on as planned. The film premiered at the Animagic convention in Mannheim, Germany last August. The organizers of Animagic said they continued with the screening as planned at the express request of the studio, who knew the risk.
There are many promotional materials credited to getting moviegoers back in theaters for multiple viewings. Japanese theaters that had already screened the movie once were starting to hand out a choice of three exclusive short story leaflets to viewers. In addition, certain theaters were distributing “postcards from Ecarte Island” starting on November 13th that contained in-universe lore.
The franchise’s side-story anime, Violet Evergarden I: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll, found previous success from last year’s release in September 2019. The film screened for at least five weeks in cinemas across Japan and had culminated 831 million yen, equivalent to 7.9 million USD.
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