This weekend, the Marvel superhero blockbuster Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will hit the big time. As a result, almost no new films were released on a large scale this past weekend. Unsurprisingly, "Black Adam" topped the box office for the third straight weekend, boosting its North American total to $137 million.

Originally, the Japanese animated film "ONE PIECE FILM RED" released last Friday was quite anticipated by the industry. In the past few years, the appetite of American audiences for foreign commercial films has grown significantly, and Japanese animation films have also ushered in more opportunities for release, such as "Demon Slayer: Infinite Train", "Curse Return 0" and "Dragon Ball Super: Super" "Heroes" all got around $20 million at the opening box office. However, this time, "One Piece: The Red-Haired Diva" finally received only $9.47 million at the box office in 2,410 theaters, far below industry expectations. The main reason is probably that American audiences are still not familiar with the IP of One Piece.

"One Piece: The Red-Haired Diva" stills

"One Piece: The Red-Haired Diva" is adapted from the manga of the same name created by Oda Eiichiro. It is the 15th theatrical animation in the series, and it is also a commemorative work for the 25th anniversary of the original serialization. It will be released in Japan on August 6, 2022. Since then, it has received 17.7 billion yen at the box office, with 12.79 million viewers, which is almost equivalent to one in ten Japanese people who have bought a ticket to watch it. For now, it looks like the film is likely to be the top-grossing film in Japan in 2022.

And some time ago, "One Piece: The Red-Haired Diva" was released in succession around the world, and it also achieved good box office results. At present, the global box office has exceeded 150 million US dollars, ranking 12th in the history of the global box office. The best Japanese movies - eleven of them are anime. However, in the United States, only 2019's "One Piece: Fever Action" was introduced and released, and the scale was small. The number of theaters shown was very limited, and the mass base was different from IP such as Dragon Ball.

"Tickets to Heaven" poster

Tickets to Paradise, which came in third on the weekend box office charts, took in $8.51 million. Before you know it, the film's global box office has accumulated to 130 million US dollars. Compared with the production cost of 60 million US dollars, it should be possible to avoid losing money. Therefore, starring George Clooney also repeatedly emphasized in a recent interview that he was grateful to Universal Pictures for allowing the film to be released in physical theaters instead of going online. "Universal has done a very brave thing. Today, basically the only way to go for this kind of work is streaming. Therefore, Universal Pictures is very courageous, and I am very grateful for that."

In short, the total North American box office this weekend was only $59 million. In the past four months, due to the lack of blockbusters, the North American box office of 14 of the 15 weekends was less than $100 million, compared with 2019 before the epidemic. There were only four weekends under $100 million during the same period, which is really telling.

Life in the theater industry is not easy, and as its upstream Hollywood film company, it is also struggling. Just last week, Warner Bros. Discovery Group (WBD) reported a loss of $2.3 billion for the third quarter. Compared with the loss of 3.4 billion US dollars in the second quarter, it cannot be regarded as a reversal of the decline, and the development prospects are still worrying. In terms of streaming media, HBO Max and Discovery+ under the group added about 2.8 million new users this quarter. Looking at the numbers alone, they performed better than Netflix’s 2.41 million in the same period. Warner also decided to add HBO Max and Discovery+ to the two major streaming media. The integration of the platform has been advanced from the original schedule of next summer to next spring.

The "Hollywood Reporter" published last Friday reported that the word epidemic, which seems to have faded out of the eyes of ordinary Americans, actually still has a great impact on Hollywood film companies, especially those independent film production companies with limited financial resources. So badly hurt, I can't see where the road is going. "The direct economic impact of the epidemic, as well as its hindrance to logistics, additional insurance costs, and daily nucleic acid testing at the filming site are expected to continue for a long time, which is very frustrating for us, because these money cannot be spent. Reflected in the work itself, there is no improvement in the quality of the work." Erica Lee, a partner of Thunder Road Pictures film company who filmed the "Quick Pursuit" series, "Border Slayer" and other films, said in a recent interview. said at an industry summit.

At present, according to industry regulations, the American film and television industry is still implementing strict epidemic prevention protocols, including regular nucleic acid testing and mandatory mask orders. Therefore, the funds involved will basically account for about one-tenth of a film's production budget. In addition, U.S. film production involves so-called "finishing guarantees (insurance)," the purchase of insurance to reduce uncertainty during filming. Since the beginning of the epidemic, this premium has added additional expenses related to the epidemic, ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars depending on the production scale, which also brings a lot of burden to independent film production companies.