Wanna Open a Hollywood Blockbuster? Forget Tinseltown. Have a Glitzy Red Carpet Premiere in Tokyo!
June 1st, 2007 by dd
Move over Hollywood. The star-studded, red-carpet premiere was once the almost exclusive property of Tinseltown. But now Tokyo is grabbing the limelight.
The fifth Harry Potter film, “The Order of the Phoenix,” will be out in Japan ahead of other markets, with Warner Bros. officials confirming that Daniel Radcliffe and other key castmembers will fly in to Tokyo when it makes its debut here June 28 — ahead of the glitzy July 3 event scheduled for London.
“Spider-Man 3″ got the trend off the ground with a spectacular launch in Tokyo on April 16, while the third installment of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise — “At World’s End” — made its Asian splash here May 23.
“Japan has always been the biggest territory outside North America, and the final boxoffice figures in Japan have sometimes outgrossed the U.S. take,” said Noriyuki Sano, head of the publicity division at Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan.
“But there are other considerations, not least the fact that there is less piracy here than in other countries, which makes companies more lenient about releasing titles here first.”
Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, Chow Yun Fat and Jerry Bruckheimer were on hand at Tokyo’s Budokan Hall for the Asian premiere of “At World’s End.” Kenji Nakamura, executive director of marketing at Buena Vista in Japan, said, “Japan is the only country where we could have a premiere as well as the U.S.”
“Japan accounts for between 10% and 15% of total global sales of a movie, so it’s a huge market for us,” Nakamura said. “That is the main reason why the Hollywood studios put priority on their presence here and send the stars.”
“Japan is a hugely important market for us because it builds a buzz through the entire market,” John Flanagan, vp marketing for 20th Century Fox in Tokyo, said. [H’woodReporter]
