Toei Animation has achieved a record high at the box office in 2022, earning around $246 million due to One Piece Film: Red and The First Slam Dunk.

Toei Animation has generated record-high box office earnings in 2022 due to One Piece Film: Red and The First Slam Dunk.

As reported by Anime News Network, the animation studio declared on Wednesday that it earned a massive 32,563,660,570 yen (around US$246 million) at the box office from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2022, surpassing its prior record of 17,980,254,340 yen (around US$135 million in present conversion rates) in 2009. A total of 23,646,555 tickets were sold by Toei last year.

Toei cited the One Piece Film: Red and The First Slam Dunk movies, which both strongly performed at the box office, as the primary reasons why the company was able to break its previous record. Since One Piece Film: Red debuted in Japanese cinemas on Aug. 6, 2022, it has sold more than 13.79 million tickets to rake in over 19 billion yen (about US$144 million) over 157 days. The First Slam Dunk recently opened in Japan on Dec. 3, 2022, selling around 5.27 million tickets in 38 days and taking the number one spot at the box office for six consecutive weeks at the time of writing. The combined earnings of these films beat out Toei’s 2009 box office record, which was achieved due to films like One Piece Film: Strong World, Mt. Tsurugidake, and the Kamen Rider Decade/Samurai Sentai Shinkenger crossover movie.

The One Piece and Slam Dunk Movies

One Piece Film: Red marks the 15th feature film the franchise has received. It follows the Straw Hat Pirates as they attend the concert of renowned singer Uta (Kaori Nazuka/Amanda Lee). The gang soon finds themselves in trouble, however, as Uta traps them in a dream world through her power of song. Thus begins a race against time as Luffy (Mayumi Tanaka/Colleen Clinkenbeard) and his friends try to escape so they aren’t trapped in the dream world forever. The success of One Piece Film: Red at the box office has made it the fifth highest-grossing Japanese film of all time.

Based on Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk manga series, The First Slam Dunk revolves around Ryota Miyagi (Shugo Nakamura), the point guard of Shohoku High School’s basketball team. Miyagi’s love for the sport stems from his late older brother Sota, who died at sea in a fishing accident. The film follows Ryota and his teammates Hanamichi Sakuragi (Subaru Kimura), Takenori Akagi (Kenta Miyake), Hisashi Mitsui (Jun Kasama), and Kaede Rukawa (Shin’ichiro Kamio) as they take to the court and challenge the inter-high basketball champions, the Sanno school.

One Piece Film: Red is now showing in theaters. While The First Slam Dunk has opened in Japan, it is not confirmed if or when it will receive a worldwide theatrical release.

Src: cbr.com