2017 theatrical anime UK box office takings to date compiled

We're now halfway through what is proving to be an incredibly busy year for theatrical anime here in the UK - so how is anime faring with its big theatrical push? Courtesy of numbers available on the web site Box Office Mojo, we've compiled both the opening week and total box office numbers (the latter of which are converted to Sterling at the current exchange rate, and thus may be lower than opening week totals which were calculated using the exchange rate at the week of release) for all of the year's anime movies to see how the landscape looks.

NOTE: The original Ghost in the Shell anime was also released theatrically in January 2017, but we were unable to find any results for this film on the site in question. Manga Entertainment's Andrew Hewson confirmed via Twitter that the film made £113,000 at the box office.

NOTE 2: Anime Limited president Andrew Partridge has also noted that Box Office Mojo's figures have heavily underestimated box office sales for some of their titles - they quote box office figures for Your Name at over £550,000 to date, while A Silent Voice earned over £130,000 at the box office. Other films listed may also have similar disparities so should only be used as vague guidelines of theatrical performance.

For starters, we've included last year's Your Name in this list as a reminder of just what a freak of nature that particular title is, smashing the total box office records for any other non-Studio Ghibli film even before returning to cinemas this August.

Elsewhere, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions provided a notable success in box office terms, proving that the franchise is still hugely popular. A Silent Voice and Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale traded blows at the box office, proving the viability of both standalone properties and those based on a popular existing anime franchise.

Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry fared less well than Sword Art Online but performed broadly in terms of what you might expect of it, while it still managed to outstrip the more recent - and more heavily promoted - In This Corner of the World despite screening in less cinemas, which seems to have suffered a disappointing opening week for a film with plenty of potential beyond anime fandom.

Of course, at this point we should make it very clear that box office takings are only a part of the story for the theatrical release - once you consider licensing costs, distribution costs, marketing and advertising budgets and so on, the overall picture becomes significantly more complex. If you were to take two of these films and compare them in these terms with everything factored in, the overall picgure of whether it was a success or failure might look very different.

Still, taken as whole these results seem to bode well for the remainder of the year, with plenty more films to look forward to and for us to check in on as 2017 comes to a close, perhaps.

EDIT (06/07/2017, 2:45PM): Added information on Ghost in the Shell to the story. Thanks to Manga Entertainment's own Andrew Hewson for pointing out that omission!

EDIT (06/07/2017, 8:30PM): Added additional figures provided by Anime Limited's Andrew Partridge, suggesting that Box Office Mojo underestimates overall box office earnings for some titles.