Steamboy sequel?

[Don Brown]

Otomo Katsuhiro's long-awaited new anime Steamboy opened yesterday across 
Japan, and already there's talk of a sequel. Executive producer Watanabe 
Shigeru surprised the audience at an opening day screening in Tokyo's 
Yurakucho by stating "We will make a sequel,"although this was later 
qualified by staff who said that a decision has yet to be made on whether 
it will be in the form of another film or a television series.
Steamboy is facing fierce competition at the Japanese box office, with 
Spiderman 2 having just opened the previous weekend and Harry Potter still 
going strong, not to mention the long-running hit Sekai no Chushin de Ai o 
Sakebu still up there at number three after ten weeks on the chart. Despite 
the hype surrounding Steamboy, there's another factor which might prevent 
it from becoming the huge hit its producers need it to be: I've noticed 
that at several local multiplexes in Chiba that it's only playing three 
times a day even though it's only just opened, treatment usually reserved 
for holdover films that the distributors have little faith in, while 
Spiderman 2 is filling two or three theaters at a time. If this is also the 
case elsewhere in Japan, Otomo might be facing another big-budget setback 
after the relative failure of Metropolis a few years ago.
Don Brown

_________________________________________________________________
???????????????????? http://messenger.msn.co.jp/