Live-Action Gintama Gets Largest Opening for Live-Action Japanese Film in China

The official Twitter account for the live-action film of Hideaki Sorachi's Gintama manga announced on Monday that the film will open in China on September 1 in 8,000 theaters with 12,000 screens, the largest screen count for a Japanese live-action film in Chinese box office history. To commemorate the feat, Sorachi drew an image of main character Gintoki with the message "Thank you for supporting the film!" in both Chinese and Japanese.



In addition, the site revealed that, as of Sunday, the film has earned 3,480,224,800 yen (about US$31.83 million) in Japan, and has sold a total of 2,644,234 tickets.

The film opened in Japan on July 14, and it earned 980 million yen (US$8.9 million) in its first four days. The film also inspired a live-action net show that debuted on Docomo's dTV streaming service on July 15, one day after the film's opening.

Sorachi began the manga in 2004 and it continues to be ranked among the top-selling manga in Japan. The manga has more than 50 million copies in print in Japan. Viz Media published the first 23 volumes in English. Shueisha published the manga's 69th volume on July 4. The manga entered its final arc last July.

The manga inspired a television anime that premiered in 2006 and continued (with several extended hiatuses) until 2013. The fifth and latest Gintama television anime series premiered on January 8, and the show began airing reruns in April. Crunchyroll streamed the most recent series as it aired in Japan, and is also streaming English-dubbed episodes. The television anime's official website is listing that the anime will return in October on Tokyo TV with a "Porori Arc."

The manga also inspired two anime films, including the "final" Gekijōban Gintama Kanketsu-hen: Yorozuya yo Eien Nare film that opened in 2013, and various OVAs and event anime.