Indeed, it’s not that well known in the rest of the world. But despite the Chinese audience’s complex, on-off love affair with Japanese content, the IP is not well known in China, even among older consumers.
GHOST IN THE SHELL 1995 JAPANESE TV
Over the 22 years since the release of Oshii’s iconic film, the property has generated a steady stream of animated movies, TV series, novels and games and influenced Western movies including The Matrix series, Avatar and Minority Report. When Masamune Shirow’s manga was first published in 1989, the vast majority of China’s cinema-going audience hadn’t been born yet, and not many were around when Mamoru Oshii’s anime version hit screens in 1995.
The film was also affected by the fact that Chinese audiences are not overly familiar with the source material. In China, the film had the marketing muscle of local investors Weying Technology, Shanghai Film Group and Huahua Media behind it, but was hit by an unfavourable release date – sandwiched between Kong: Skull Island, which opened on March 24, and The Fate Of The Furious, which opens this weekend.Īs Furious 7 is currently China’s biggest ever imported movie, the latest installment in the blockbuster franchise is widely expected to reinvigorate the sluggish Chinese box office and will likely push Ghost In The Shell off screens. Why? They see themselves represented in Japanese media all the time.”īut the film still didn’t perform to expectations in Asia’s two biggest box office markets, which means the $110m production, directed by Rupert Sanders and backed by Paramount, DreamWorks and Reliance, is likely to end up in the red. The casting of a white actress, Scarlett Johansson, as a police cyborg named Motoko Kusanagi went largely unchallenged by Chinese and Japanese audiences, not because they’re unaware of issues of race or privilege, but because they’re not under-represented minorities in the societies they’re living in.Īs one Japanese viewer commented online: “Hollywood whitewashing is not an issue that most Japanese people in Japan care about. In neither market was the film affected by the whitewashing controversy that plagued it in North America and resulted in a disappointing $19m opening weekend. Opening on Friday (April 7) it grossed $3.2m over the three-day weekend, which is considered respectable but not blockbuster business.
In Japan, the film opened in second place in terms of box office revenue over the two-day weekend, trailing Sing in its fourth week. In China, the cyber-punk thriller grossed $21.6m over the three-day weekend (April 7-9), which topped the weekend box office and outstripped its North America debut, but was below expectations for a 3D US studio movie. Paramount’s Ghost In The Shell, the live-action adaptation of the cult Japanese manga, had decent but not spectacular openings in China and Japan last weekend.
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