One Piece has been slowly growing its international presence ahead of the live-action series hitting Netflix at some point in the future. While production has been busy, it’s not the only major project finding development. The original manga by Eiichiro Oda is about to enter its final saga and kicked it off with quite the bang. Not only is One Piece Odyssey on the horizon to release later this year, but we also had the world premiere of the fifteenth film entry simply titled RED.
The story focuses on the Strawhat pirate’s arrival at a concert by the superstar Uta. As it turns out, she’s not only a childhood friend of Luffy but also the daughter of Shanks; probably one of the biggest revelations to catch people off-guard when the first trailer dropped. The film has now opened in Japan across 495 screens on August 6th and has already made quite the splash.
According to Crunchyroll, One Piece Film RED has made 2.25 billion yen, which equates to $16.63M. What makes this stand out is that it’s now the biggest opening for a One Piece film yet and even the second-biggest two-day opening weekend in Japanese history. The only one still standing at the top was Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train which pulled in 3.3 billion yen. It did take the top spot from Jujutsu Kaisen 0, which stood at 1.6 billion yen.
It’s also now the third film to make one billion yen on opening day and only the second to make another billion on its second day. So, it’s safe to say that the project has definitely had quite a bit of hype behind it and with the current events in the manga unfolding, there’s a likelihood it could also perform quite well internationally. Mugen Train was a big international success during the pandemic, and it’ll be interesting to see
Source: Crunchyroll
