The other day I received an inquiry related to the movie business in Japan, and this inspired me to take a peek at recent industry data. After punching some numbers into Excel, I came up with this graph*—which compares box office revenues in Japan earned in recent years from Japanese versus imported movies.
Uh oh. It appears that Hollywood may—at least for the moment—be in a bit of trouble.
In 2006, while the box office take from imported films dropped about 20%, revenues from local flicks were up over 30%. What's more, this appears to be part of a trend.
So, what's going on here?
The honest answer is that it's hard to say for sure without a close analyses of several factors.
However, I do have my theories which involve the following:
- Macro trends: societal, cultural, technological
- Industry infrastructure shifts
- Consumer tastes vs. content
- Advertising and communications issues
I can't elaborate on these further at the moment (too busy looking for my next gig). With luck I'll be able to return to this topic in a future post.
*Box office data from Motion Pictures Producers Association of Japan
** Need more information on this subject? Click here.
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