By Mark Schilling
Tokyo: How important is Japan to a film's international success? Evidently thinking "extremely," Phantom of the Opera director Joel Schumacher and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber visited the country twice before the film's January 29 opening, giving interviews to nearly fifty media organizations. Meanwhile, stars Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum and Patrick Wilson doubled this total. "They gave us 100% of everything we wanted -- that's rare for foreign talent on publicity tours in Japan," commented Gaga publicist Mutsumi Urushido.
The result: Phantom topped the Japanese box office in its first two weeks on release, grossing $9,632,498 on 271 screens. Gaga now predicts the film will finish north of $40 million and, if its run is extended, may even hit the $50 million mark, bettering its $46 million US domestic take.
Gaga started its promotional push a year ago, focusing on working women in their twenties and thirties, while also appealing to female fans older and younger than this range. "We worked out a detailed promotional plan, targeting three main demographic groups," explained Urushido. In other words, almost anyone of the female gender with any exposure to Lloyd Webber's work -- a huge number in Japan.
Also, the film hit the theatres in the midst of a boom for romantic dramas, fueled by the monster success of the Korean TV drama Winter Sonata and the Isao Yukisada drama Crying Out for Love In the Centre of the World, which grossed more than $80 million last year in Japan alone. "We have almost no competition at the moment," commented Urushido. "The timing of the release turned out to be exactly right." Which, after the critical and commercial battering they received elsewhere, must make Lloyd Webber and Schumacher extremely glad.
