Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away sets China box office record, trumps Toy Story 4, 18 years after rest of world saw it

Anime master Hayao Miyazaki’s second film to get a belated cinematic release in China, Spirited Away has biggest opening weekend ever there for a Japanese film

Story of a girl who moves to a city’s suburbs and enters a supernatural realm has taken US$33 million in five days, more than double sales for Pixar’s new film

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In a scene from Hayao Miyazaki’s 2001 film Spirited Away, Chihiro (voiced for its China run by Zhou Dongyu) runs away after being released from a resort for supernatural beings. The film has broken box office records in China.

Published: 7:29pm, 25 Jun 2019Updated: 12:02pm, 27 Jun 2019

Animation maestro Hayao Miyazaki’s 2001 film Spirited Away had a record opening weekend for a Japanese film in China, and has taken more than twice as much as another big animated film, Pixar’s Toy Story 4, which hit Chinese cinemas the same day.

As of the afternoon of June 25, Spirited Away had box office takings of more than 230 million yuan (US$33 million) in China, compared with less than 110 million yuan for Toy Story 4.

Spirited Away took 127.7 million yuan from Friday to Sunday, performing even better than the first Miyazaki film to enjoy a wide cinematic release in China, My Neighbor Totoro, which opened in December 2018. While Miyazaki’s whimsical films have enchanted worldwide audiences for decades, none of his films had gone on general release in China until then.

My Neighbor Totoro took 170 million yuan during its run in Chinese cinemas.

Chinese film-goers’ eager embrace of Spirited Away comes as President Xi Jinping prepares to make a three-day visit to Japan to attend the G20 summit in Osaka, his first visit to the country since taking office in 2013.