Even the film companies competing with Fate/Zero for screen time thought this was only natural.
Understanding it was one thing, but accepting it was another.
Japanese film companies felt a greater sense of crisis than their North American counterparts.
After all, Japanese films typically stayed in theaters for half a year or more. If Fate/Zero maintained the box-office trajectory of its predecessor, FSN, then the Japanese film market would once again have no room for anyone else this year!
The most anxious of them all was Toho.
To avoid the potential surge in moviegoers drawn by Fate/Zero, they had moved their big romantic film of the year, The Promise of the World, from May to July.
But given Fate/Zero's monstrous box-office performance so far, Toho's distribution department felt that even moving the film to July wasn't safe.
The problem was, they'd already moved the release date once. They couldn't move it again, could they?
What would the other Japanese film companies think of them then?
The industry's heavyweight had been forced to change its release schedule twice by a fledgling shell of a film company.
Wouldn't every film company start asking Toho, "Come on, big brother, can you even handle this?"
Toho: We Should Have Known Better!
Hirotaka Matsuoka stood in Toho's office tower, gazing through the glass at the bustling streets of Tokyo below.
His expression was remarkably calm, as if the box-office figures for Fate/Zero that his secretary had just reported meant nothing to him.
In truth, as an executive director at Toho—especially one in charge of film production—Matsuoka was more anxious than anyone.
1.135 billion yen and 850,000 admissions: that was Fate/Zero's box-office performance last week.
Including its earlier earnings, the film had already raked in 6 billion yen in Japan after three weeks in theaters.
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