Hello, this is Izumitani from Ehime Film Commission.
Japan’s film commission infrastructure began taking shape around the year 2000. Today, over 300 FCs operate across the country, with around 130 of them affiliated with the Japan Film Commission (JFC).
In 2000, 282 Japanese films were released in theaters. By 2024, that number had reached 685 — 2.4 times greater, with an average of 1.8 new Japanese films premiering every day.
Among those, the benchmark for a “hit” is ¥1 billion in box office revenue — the threshold required to appear in the Motion Picture Producers Association’s official statistics. Between 2015 and 2024, an average of 33 films per year cleared that threshold. That represents about 5% of all theatrical releases.
The other 95% — roughly 576 films per year — earn under ¥1 billion.
As a recent data point: Trillion Game the Movie, released on February 14, 2025, has earned over ¥1.9 billion — making it the most commercially successful Ehime FC-supported film since Manatsu no Hoteishiki (Midsummer’s Equation (¥3.31 billion). The highest-grossing film Ehime FC has ever supported remains Sekai no Chushin de Ai wo Sakebu (Crying Out Love, in the Center of the World) at ¥8.5 billion.
Now, here is the question we set out to answer: of the roughly 33 annual hit films between 2015 and 2024, how many received support from a film commission?
The answer: between 42% and 76% in any given year, with an average of 59%.
The remaining 40% breaks down roughly as: 34% anime productions, and 6% films that received no FC support. Of those anime figures, FCs are increasingly involved — and as that involvement grows, the percentage of hit films with FC support will rise further. Ehime FC’s own work on the anime adaptation of Ganbatte Ikimasshoi (Give It All), released in 2024, is one example.
Over the ten-year period from 2015 to 2024, an average of 33 films per year qualified as hits. FCs supported 60% of those titles. That naturally raises a question: what accounts for the remaining 40%? The answer is that 34% of that gap is made up of anime productions — films like Shin Evangelion, Detective Conan, Ryuu to Sobakasu no Hime (Belle), and Ganbatte Ikimasshoi. FCs are increasingly involved in anime, though the numbers are still modest. As that involvement grows, the overall support rate will climb further.
Looking at FY2024 in isolation: total Japanese box office was ¥155.8 billion, a record high. Of that, ¥105 billion came from 31 hit films — 67.4% of the total. The remaining ¥50.8 billion was earned by 654 films, yielding an average of ¥77.7 million per film. The actual median is likely lower, since several films near the ¥1 billion threshold pull the average up.
The films in that lower tier are the ones that FCs across Japan — including Ehime — support most of the time. Attracting productions is only part of the job. The rest is promotion, post-release regional programming, and building the case that what happens on screen reflects, and gives back to, the places where it was made. That work continues.