Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods has been battling the box office in Japan, and in true Goku style, is dominating. In its opening weekend, the film pulled in ¥683,925,000 in it’s first two days of March 30 and 31. That is about $6.8 million making it the number 1 non-American movie and number 5 movie in the international box office behind G.I. Joe: Retaliation, The Croods, Jack the Giant Slayer, and Oz the Great and Powerful. Now this might not sound like much but to put in a little perspective; those 4 movies are being shown in over 50 territories while DBZ was only shown in Japan on 3828 screens. That is impressive. It should be also noted that it also played on IMAX screens, which is a higher ticket compared to normal screens.
In it’s second weekend, 9 days of being in theatres, Battle of Gods and earned a total of ¥1,772,955,800. Toei Animation has stated it expects this movie to earn over 3 billion yen and it is well on its way. The last Dragon Ball theatrical movie was released 17 years ago. Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods marks the first Dragon Ball movie with the original creator, Akira Toriyama, actively participating in the story of the film. It takes place a few years after the end of the Majin Buu saga where the Birus, God of Destruction, (Hakaishin Birusu) is awakened looking for an opponent to give him a challenge. And anyone who knows Goku, knows he loves a challenge.
With the success of the film, DBZ fans abroad would hope that there would be a fast release of a dub by Funimation. Well, it might take longer than we would want. 20th Century Fox distributed the movie over in Japan and gets the first option to release it internationally. So if they decided to do so and release their own dub, they have the option to do so. If they decide to do nothing, Funimation can step in but they do not think that we’ll see it on our shores until next year. Here’s hoping Funimation get to dub with the voices we all love, or hate for some people, and Fox doesn’t decided to pack it full of celebrities who know nothing about anime. But I doubt that will happen.
