PROS:
One Piece Film Red currently represents the lone wide release of the November 4 weekend, and the franchise’s global fan base has already sent the film to $120.2 million internationally (mostly from Japan at $112.3 million).
Anime has become an increasingly strong draw in the domestic market as fans have rallied via grassroots marketing campaigns to drive the box office success of films such as Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie, and Demon Slayer the Movie during the pandemic era.
Preliminary tracking for One Piece is comparable to three of them in varying respects depending on which model is given precedence, though as always, forecasts are highly volatile for the evolving genre and its domestic market pull.
The film will have wide release play and a premium footprint in IMAX and other formats.
CONS:
It remains to be seen whether or not this One Piece release is quite as strong of a theatrical draw domestically as the aforementioned IPs, though this growing sector of theatrical releases has a history of over-performing expectations more often than not. Overall social and trailer metrics are not quite at the level of Demon Train or Jujutsu yet, but some models suggest that could change.
Pre-sales have only just begun as of the writing of this report, so they won’t be included in the universe of tracking samples until at least next week.