One Piece Film: Red Box Office Prediction

Having grossed nearly $150 million in Japan and other territories, animated fantasy adventure One Piece Film: Red arrives on November 4th. The 15th feature in the franchise that began in 2000, the Toei Animation title comes from director Gorõ Taniguchi.

This is the same studio that gave us Dragon Ball Super: Broly and Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. The former made nearly $10 million in its opening frame in January 2019 while Super Hero swooped to a remarkable $21 million start in August.

One Piece is currently the highest grosser of the year in Japan. Comparisons to Dragon Ball are tricky since the predecessors in this series have not received wide North American distribution. One Piece: Stampede preceded this and made just over $1 million domestically in 2019.

A further complication is that I’ve yet to see a screen count. The aforementioned Super Hero flew to its $20M+ premiere in 3000 venues. I doubt this will reach those numbers. That said, I’ve underestimated this genre before and it seems sensible to project this could debut right above or right below $10 million.

One Piece Film: Red opening weekend prediction: $10.2 million

For my The Banshees of Ininsherin prediction, click here:

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero Box Office Prediction

Over three and a half years ago, Dragon Ball Super: Broly significantly exceeded expectations stateside. As summer closes out, the follow-up Super Hero hopes to do the same. The martial arts fantasy from Toei Animation is actually the 21st feature in the long running Japanese franchise. Tetsuro Kodama directs.

The pic already did brisk business in its native country when it opened in June. Over the long MLK frame in 2019, Broly got a kickstart to the weekend with a Wednesday bow. In its first two days of release, it captured $10.4 million with a six-day overall haul of over $22 million.

Hero is not slated for a hump day start nor is it premiering over a holiday. That makes comparisons to Broly a little tricky. There’s no doubt that this genre is extremely front loaded and I certainly see it hitting double digits. It could find itself in a battle for #1 with the Idris Elba headlined survival thriller Beast. Both could be competing for some of the same eyeballs. I’ll project $12-14 million is where this lands and that puts it barely behind where I have Beast at.

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero opening weekend prediction: $13.2 million

For my Beast prediction, click here:

Beast Box Office Prediction