Box Office - Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero lags behind Broly’s opening weekend

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero has had a strong opening weekend at the Japanese box office, but still lags behind the launch of Broly.

Dragon Ball remains one of the most iconic and popular anime franchises in the entire world. Last week, the franchise added their latest original feature film to their already-remarkable resume, the Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero movie.

Whilst fans outside Japan are still waiting patiently for the film to open in their local theatres, many are curious as to how Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero is performing at the Japanese box office in comparison to the last movie, Broly.

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Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero box office collection

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero was originally meant to premiere in April 2022; however, the film’s premiere was delayed until June 11^th domestically in Japan because of the internal hacking of Toei Animation.

The anime feature finally opened at the Japanese box office earlier this week, with 498,000 tickets being sold across 407 screens showcasing the new film and toppling the Top Gun: Maverick sequel, which had spent the past two weeks in the number one spot.

According to Crunchyroll, the movie earned around 670 million yen ($5.04 million) on its opening weekend; that’s around 82.4% of Dragon Ball Super: Broly’s debut weekend, which sold over 820,000 tickets and earned 1.05 billion yen ($9.26 million)

However, Comic Book does note that the “2018 film opened to more money, but it did have more screens and an extra day to fill its opening numbers”, with the movie making its debut on a Friday, rather than Saturday.

Crunchyroll also revealed that Super Hero actually had the lowest Saturday-Sunday opening of any of the previous four Dragon Ball films, with Battle of Gods (2013) earning 683-million-yen, Resurrection ‘F’ (2015) making 960-million-yen and Broly (2018) at around 813-million-yen.

Per The Kogyo Tsushin, Japan’s Top 10 Box Office films from the past week included Top Gun: Maverick (2^nd), Shin Ultraman (3^rd), The Quintessential Quintuplets (4^th), Detective Conan: Bride of Halloween (5^th), The Karakai Ute no Takagi-san the Movie/Teasing Master Takagi-san (6^th), Mobile Suit Gundam: The Island of Cruz Doan (7^th).

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International release date for Super Hero confirmed

Whilst fans in Japan are enjoying Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero on the big screen this week, fans around the world are still waiting patiently for the international premiere – and doing our best to avoid potential spoilers on social media.

Last week, a leaked poster seemingly revealed that the US release date had been set for August 19^th. Thankfully, Crunchyroll has just confirmed the global launch windows for the new anime movie:

• August 18^th: Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Central America, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay
• August 19^th: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Zambia and Vietnam 
• August 26^th: India and Indonesia
• August 30^th: Malaysia and Brunei
• August 31^st: Philippines 
• September 1^st: Singapore
• September 8^th: Taiwan
• September 15^th: South Korea
• September 29^th: Thailand, Hong Kong and Macao

You can find more information here.

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By Tom Llewellyn – [email protected]