Anime News

Howl to Surpass Spirited Away's Box Office Record?
Date: 3/4/2005
Depends on Your Math


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ScreenDaily.com is running an article (registration required), stating that Howl's Moving Castle has passed the US$200 million mark at the international box office and that it has "a good chance surpassing Spirited Away?s $265m international cumulative gross."

ScreenDaily however fails to take into account that the US dollar that it is using to measure foreign box office sales has fallen as much as 24% or more in comparison to foreign currencies in the time since Spirited Away's release.

According to Screen Daily, Howl's Moving Castle has earned US$170 million in Japan, compared to Spirited Away's US$234 million Japanese box office gross (73%). However, calculated in Japanese Yen Howl's Moving Castle has earned 17.8 billion yen, compared to Spirited Away's 29.3 billion yen (61%).

The US dollar has fallen 17% from 125 yen to 104 yen since 2001.

Internationally, the difference is even more drastic, in Europe where both Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away have earned a significant portion of their non-Japanese box office sales, the US dollar has lost 24% of its value compared to the Euro since its inception on January 1st, 2002.

In order to surpass Spirited Away's international box office sales, with currencies corrected to be equal to their 2001 values, Howl's Moving Castle will have to earn approximately US$310 million or more.
Source: Anime News Network