News: The First Slam Dunk Film Takes Top Spot on Last Day of Screening

The First Slam Dunk, the new anime film of Takehiko Inoue‘s Slam Dunk basketball manga, ranked first place in the Japanese box office on its final day of screening on Thursday, despite having already screened in theaters for about nine months. As of its final day, the film has sold about 10.88 million tickets for 15.73 billion yen (around US$107.6 million).

The film held the “Last Game” special screenings in its last official seven days in cinemas in Japan, which started last Friday, and ended on Thursday.

The film is the 13th highest-earning film of all-time in Japan, surpassing Hayao Miyazaki‘s 2008 anime film Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, which has 15.5 billion yen (around US$105.8 million) in domestic earnings. The First Slam Dunk is also the seventh highest-earning anime film in Japan.

The film opened in Japan on December 3, and ranked at #1 in its opening weekend. The film sold 847,000 tickets and earned 1,295,808,780 yen (about US$9.50 million) over its opening weekend.

By June, the film had sold over 10 million tickets to earn 14.43 billion yen (about US$103.5 million that time) in Japan, after about a half a year in theaters.

GKIDS released the film in the United States and Canada with both an English dub and with Japanese audio and English subtitles on July 28. The film earned US$662,211 in its first weekend in North America. The film has a worldwide cumulative earning of US$152,355,179 as of August 20.

The film won Animation of the Year at the 46th annual Japan Academy Film Prizes. Toshiyuki Matsui, the film’s producer, received this year’s general award for Eiga Engeki Bunka Kyōkai’s (Film Theater Culture Association) 42nd annual Fujimoto Awards.

The film won the Axis: Satoshi Kon Award for Excellence in Animation for best animated feature film, and it won third place for Best Animated Feature in the Audience Awards category of the 27th annual Fantasia International Film Festival, which was held from July 20 to August 9 in Montreal, Canada.

Inoue personally directed the film at Toei Animation and wrote the script. Among the listed staff members are character designer/animation director Yasuyuki Ebara (Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress) and technical directors Katsuhiko Kitada (Attack on Titan episodes, Major: Yūjō no Winning Shot), Naoki Miyahara (Digimon Adventure, Popin Q), Toshio Ōhashi (LayereD Stories 0), and Yū Kamatani (Looking for Magical DoReMi, Precure Super Stars!). Daiki Nakazawa directed the CG, and Yūta Ogura produced the CG. Kazuo Ogura directed the art. Yota Tsuruoka directed the sound with Koji Kasamatsu.