In the world of anime, The Tale of Princess Kaguya is the most expensive anime movie ever made. The movie was one of the biggest productions by Studio Ghibli and still holds a lot of importance in the hearts of anime fans as it brought with it a new style of storytelling animation that was very rare for anime lovers to see.
The difficulties encountered during production caused the budget for this feature film to soar, and its release was delayed by several years. The movie is based on the traditional Japanese folktale The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, which was penned by an unidentified author in Japan’s Heian period in the late ninth or early tenth centuries.
Even after holding such a great budget and story development, the film was not able to live up to the expectations of fans and was deemed a huge flop. The film did not perform well in terms of numbers and sales, which was a major disappointment for Studio Ghibli despite receiving positive reviews and being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 87th Academy Awards.
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The Budget of The Tale of Princess Kaguya
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is a 2013 Japanese animated classic fictitious film co-written and directed by Isao Takahata. It was produced by Studio Ghibli for Nippon Television Network, Walt Disney Japan, and TOHO. The producer took eighteen months to assemble a team and lay the foundation before the film’s production began in 2005–2006.
Due to the prolonged production duration, the budget was raised to roughly $49.3 million (US), or ¥5 billion, to finish the film. Due to this, the film became the most prohibitively expensive anime and even the most costly Japanese production ever. Nippon TV provided the majority of the funding for The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.
Although the film was appreciated by a lot of fans and critics, it could not do well in terms of sales and box office collection. Despite receiving greater recognition for the effort put into the film thanks to 13 wins and 38 nominations at various festivals and award shows, the movie was still unable to recoup its outlay of budget.
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Why Was The Tale of Princess Kaguya a Monetary Flop?
With a first-place opening weekend gross of ¥284 million ($2.8 million), the movie made a strong start in Japan. It brought in ¥2,313,602,733 ($22,613,153) at the Japanese box office as of February 2, 2014. After that, it brought in ¥2.47 billion ($25.31 million) in Japan, ranking as the country’s eleventh highest-grossing Japanese film of 2014.
With $703,232 in North America and $969,920 in other countries, it brought in $27.02 million globally. Physical sales of the Blu-ray and DVD releases brought in $3.42 million. Compared to the budget that went into the movie, the film was a huge flop.
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This is due to several factors, chief among them being the budget. Even so, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya had a restricted theatrical run and a story and style of anime that catered to a particular group of people rather than a broad audience.
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