Sword Art Online 2 is the sequel to the 2010 anime film Sword Art Online. It was released in Japan on October 2, and it’s currently the country’s biggest theatrical release of the year. The film is most popular in its home country, but it’s also been seen by audiences in several other countries. The film’s production crew included Netflix co-founder Mike McDermott. He serves as the executive producer alongside Hajime Masada and Yoko Shinomoto. In this article, we’ll examine how much revenue Sword Art Online 2 made at the box office, how much it cost to make, and which theaters in the world most benefited from it. We’ll also take a look at some of the ancillary markets that the film generated, such as game sales and theme park tickets.
How Much Did Sword Art Online 2 Make At The Box Office?
Let’s begin by looking at the film’s box office performance in Japan, one of the world’s largest markets. According to NPD Japan, Sword Art Online 2 was the country’s third-biggest opening of all time behind only Detective Conan: End of the World and Your Name. It earned an impressive ¥70.6 billion (roughly $78.7 million) at the box office — over double its original €38 million (about $43 million) budget.
The film’s biggest market is, in fact, China. According to data from MTime, a media measurement and analytics firm, the film opened to a massive ¥64 million (roughly $72 million) in China on Oct 6. This makes it the second-biggest opener for any anime movie in China behind only Monster Hunt (2015). It also marks the biggest-ever box office debut for Netflix in the country.
Other major markets for the film include the U.S., Indonesia, and Thailand. Overall, the film sold 5.67 million tickets in its first ten days. This makes it the second-biggest anime film in U.S. history after Pokemon: Mewtwo Strikes Back (1998), and the highest-grossing anime film ever released in North America (excepting China). To put this in context, the original Sword Art Online was only seen by about 500,000 people in North America, so its sequel is already proving to be profitable.
Who’s The Most Popular Character In Sword Art Online 2?
It’s quite clear that the fans of the anime series really liked the film. Not only did it earn a decent amount of money around the world, but it also became quite popular among its audience. To celebrate the release of Sword Art Online: The Movie, several English-speaking fans got together and made an unofficial tweet list of the characters they liked best from the film.
The top five characters on the list are (in order) Asuna, Kirito, Erwin, Agni, and Klein. Interestingly, the list is mainly made up of female characters, which is quite different from the anime’s audience. In the anime, about 70% of the characters are female. However, this character selection test is just a fan-made thing, so take it with a grain of salt.
How Was Sword Art Online 2 Made?
Netflix, which originally collaborated with Kadokawa on the anime, produced the film. It’s a common practice for anime studios to give smaller partners like Netflix a cut of the back-end profits in exchange for production help. This is partly because it’s difficult to negotiate large sums of money with a company that doesn’t have much experience in the film industry, but it’s also a matter of simple respect. These days, most anime studios prefer to work with a company that can afford to give them a healthy financial stake in the project.
The Netflix-produced anime movies are quite cheap to make. To put this in perspective, the average Netflix production costs about $30 million. This is less than the average cost of a major studio production like Toy Story 4 (which cost about $50 million to make) and a quarter of the cost of a live-action Hollywood production like Black Panther (which cost about $150 million).
How Much Does It Cost To Make A Netflix Anime Movie?
You don’t need to spend a lot of money to make an anime movie for Netflix. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. As we mentioned above, most of them are made with a very limited budget. To give you an idea of what that budget entailed, here’s a breakdown of the production costs for the first two seasons of Sword Art Online:
- Season 1 – ¥38 million
- Season 2 – ¥32 million
- Total
These numbers do not include the costs of printing the source material or paying animators and other crew members. They also don’t factor in the money Netflix had to shell out to secure the exclusive rights to the Sword Art Online intellectual property.
Is There A Difference In The Marketing And The Production Of Netflix Anime Movies?
Marketing a film is quite different from producing it. The former includes things like publishing a movie’s synopsis and details about the characters, setting the release date, and creating trailers and posters. The latter includes everything else related to making the movie, from hiring the right people to handling the filming to editing the final product. While the former costs a lot, it’s quite minimal when compared to the latter.
It’s quite interesting how much more a Netflix production costs when compared to a traditional anime movie. The former is, by nature, a massive undertaking. It requires a lot of manpower and a decent budget. The latter is, however, a lot more simple and less expensive. Traditional anime movies are, for the most part, made by a small group of people who either work for the anime studio or who are part of its management. This is because it’s difficult to find the right people with the necessary skills to make a feature-length anime at a decent price point. The amount of time it takes to make a traditional anime is also quite long. It takes about three months to a year to make a feature-length film.
What Markets Did Sword Art Online 2 Travel To?
The film earned quite a bit of money around the world, but which countries saw it the most? That’s a great question, and the answer is quite complicated. Take a look at the top ten countries that saw the most revenue (in order):
- Japan – €16.7 million
- China – €11.7 million
- Thailand – €10.5 million
- Indonesia – €7.9 million
- USA – €7.3 million
- Brazil – €6.6 million
- Malaysia – €5.9 million
- Vietnam – €5.4 million
- Turkey – €4.7 million
- Russia – €4.3 million
- New Zealand – €3.9 million
As you can see, it’s a very Japan-centric audience that went to see Sword Art Online 2. The film was most popular in the country where it was born – Japan. It also did quite well in China and Thailand, the two biggest anime markets in the world. One would assume that the film would do well in Indonesia and the USA as well, but this was not the case. The film only performed poorly in both of these countries. Similarly, although it did well in Russia, Ukraine, and the Ukraine, it barely registered in the USA.
Which Theaters Did Sword Art Online 2 Perform Best At?
It’s quite difficult to compare movie theaters right now because of the pandemic. However, taking the liberty of comparing the first season of Sword Art Online to the second season, it’s quite clear which one did better. While the first season opened to about 1200 theaters and performed quite well overall, the second season only managed to play in about 700 venues, and it underperformed compared to the first.
Looking at ticket sales by venue shows that the film did quite well in a lot of smaller theaters across Japan. It also did quite well in a lot of the country’s festival theaters, like the Kyoto International Manga Festival and the Tokyo International Anime Festival. For some reason, the film underperformed in a lot of other venues, including some of the country’s biggest movie houses.