Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F finally made its much anticipated debut in theaters in the US with its dub from Funimation. The movie has now been out for three days, with box office totals out for the first two already and the movie is outperforming basically all expectations, which is quite funny when comparing it to the Hollywood live action bomb Dragon Ball Evolution that came out in 2009.
Dragon Ball Evolution was an abomination of a movie that was not only hurt by the writer’s strike, but just not a good idea in inception. Evolution debuted on April 10, 2009 on a Friday and completely bombed at the box office.
Coming in at 8th place, behind other newcomers Hannah Montana The Movie and Observe and Report, it made only $4,756,488 in its opening weekend, on its way to a total domestic gross of just under $9.4 million on a budget that was never revealed publicly. For the first two weeks that Evolution was in theaters, it was on 2,181 screens, making $2.174,663 on opening day, before a drop to $1,587,978 on day 2, and $993,847 on day 3.
In comparison, Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F debuted on only 895 screens on Tuesday and jumped up to 901 screens on Wednesday. For only a Tuesday, Resurrection F made $1,967,626, and then made $1,553,580 on Wednesday. If the movie ended up holding on to make at least $1,235,282 on day 3, it will have outmatched Evolution in the same amount of days, though this is during the week compared to the much more theater friendly weekends.
This is also on less than half the screens, due to theaters mostly showing one showing a day for the most part, compared to multiple per day back when Evolution debuted. Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F will likely end up making less total domestically than Evolution, due to its limited run and lesser screens, though it is definitely making more per screening easily. It really is incredibly impressive what Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F is doing right now, coming in at just behind the just released Vacation in its first day on Tuesday at #6 on the box office charts in nearly 1/4 the number of theaters.
The movie follows up on Dragon Ball Z: Battle of the Gods from last year that did pretty well on very limited screens as well, so hopefully we will continue to see movies like this get more widespread releases than just showing in a few cities, as previous anime releases did.
If you have any interest in going to see Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F, make sure to check your local listings, but it is supposed to be showing in theaters through next Wednesday, August 12, though for some reason most theaters are not showing it today. Also make sure to check back over the weekend for our impressions of the movie upon getting the chance to see it.
