Pokémon the movie XY "The Archdjinn of the Rings, Hoopa" & "Pikachu and the Pokemon Band" debuted at number three on its opening weekend. The film was shown across 365 screens nationwide and was seen by 351,592 people, making 384,115,100 yen (approximately US $3,102,267) over the three day weekend. The ratio of men to women was 71 to 29. The age ranges were as follows: 50.2% elementary school age, 13.8% kindergarten / pre-school, and 23.8% aged 30 or over (I have no idea how they could have possibly gotten this information, by the way). The top spot went to Hero while the number 2 spot went to The Boy and the Beast.
So are these numbers any good? The short answer: no.
Let's take a look at how the other Pokemon movies have done on their opening weekends:
Movie
Opening Weekend Box Office
2015 "The Archdjinn of the Rings, Hoopa"
384,115,100 yen (Source) (Saturday / Sunday)
2014 "The Cocoon of Destruction and Diancie"
393,259,400 yen (Saturday / Sunday)
559,908,500 yen (Three-day weekend) (Source)
2013 "The Extreme Speed Genosect and the Awakening of Mewtwo"
486,293,500 yen (Source) (Saturday / Sunday)
2012 "Kyruem vs. The Sacred Swordsman Keldeo"
753,760,100 (Source) (Three-day weekend)
2011 "Victini and the Black / White Hero, Zekrom / Reshiram" (both movies combined)
826,306,800 yen (Three-day weekend)
2011 "Victini and the Black Hero, Zekrom"
386,201,950 yen (Source) (Three-day weekend)
2011 "Victini and the White Hero, Reshiram"
440,104,850 yen (Source) (Three-day weekend)
2010 "The Master of Illusions, Zoroark"
629,471,700 yen (Source) (Saturday / Sunday)
Now the fact that we have the two-day figure for some of the movies but only have the three-day figure for others makes comparisons difficult but it should still be clear that the things have not been going great lately. In the past the pattern was fairly simple: each movie would do worse than the movie before it but things would pick back up again whenever we got to the start of a new series. The first Advanced Generation movie did better than the final Pocket Monsters movie, the first Diamond & Pearl movie did better than the final Advanced Generation movie, and the first Best Wishes! movie(s) did better than the final Diamond & Pearl movie.
But that didn't happen when we entered XY. The general assumption was that the first XY movie would do better than the final Best Wishes! movie but, as you can see above, that didn't happen. Last year's movie did worse than its predecessor, and it doesn't seem like this year's movie is going to turn that around.
The thing is, they really, really tried this year. The promotion here in Japan has been nonstop and there's absolutely no way people don't know there was a new Pokemon movie out this weekend. What chance does next year's movie possibly have of doing better than this year's? They've already used ALL LEGENDARIES EVARRR!!!!!1!!1!...what else can they do to top that?