Last weekend saw the debut of Persona 3 the Movie #1: Spring of Birth, and the movie is doing quite well by Japanese film standards, with a start of 40,000 people attending the showing in the first two days since its opening.
With Studio Ghibli’s latest film, The Story of Princess Kaguya, premiering on the same date, it was a rather unexpected surprise for Persona 3 the Movie to rank as high as it did in its opening weekend, where film managed to amass a box office revenue of 60,912,300 yen (about $600,000) in just two days of screen time at over 30 movie theaters across Japan.
While it finished overall ranked seventh place in all viewings, it managed to snag the number one spot for Japanese mini-theater rankings.
Another noteworthy report is from one of Shinjuku, Tokyo’s biggest movie theaters in Wald 9 Cinema, where they revealed that the average viewers were those from ages 10 to 30, and surprisingly had a 4:6 gender ratio in favor of women, which is an unusual case, as the female audience tend to be much smaller for movies that are based on RPG adaptations.
Additionally, they also report that there were plenty of people who went to watch the movie, but have yet to play Persona 3, and they expect word-of-mouth to further spread the popularity of not only the film, but also introduce new fans to the series.
During an event to commemorate the release of Persona 3 the Movie #1: Spring of Birth, it was announced that a second movie based on the game will be released in the early summer of 2014.
