Makoto Shinkai's Movie Budget

Posted October 13th, 2008 by Nick
in

I got involved in a discussion on AnimeNfo comparing Hayao Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai1. While looking up some hard facts about both of these animation directors, I came across the difference in the budgets they had to work with.

I couldn't find any numbers for Howl's Moving Castle, but I did find the estimated budgets2 for his two movies preceeding it::

Sprited Away (2001): ¥1,900,000,000 (About $15,800,000 in 20013. This would be around $20,000,000 adjusting for inflation to 2008.)
Princess Mononoke (1997): ¥2,400,000,000 (About $20,000,000 in 19974. This would be around $27,000,000 adjusting for inflation to 2008.)

Of course, Miyazaki is the proven animation director; Shinkai is still a newbie and basically still learning on the go. But this still really surprised me:

Five Centimeters Per Second (2007): ¥25,000,000 (About $220,000 in 20075. This would be around $230,000 adjusting for inflation to 2008.)

I've always thought that Makoto Shinkai probably worked on a smaller budget, but how much of a magnitude smaller really surprised me. I was thinking that he was working in the $1-2 million U.S. dollar range for his movies, not as low as $220,000 U.S. Dollars6!

Here's some budget numbers (in yen, estimated) that I could find for movies by other directors:

Akira (1988): ¥1,100,000,000 (About $8,500,000 in 19887, or around $16,000,000 adjusting for inflation to 2008.)
Steamboy (2004): ¥2,127,519,898 (About $19,000,000 in 20048, or around $22,000,000 adjusting for inflation to 2008.)
Perfect Blue (1998): ¥3,000,000 (!) (About $23,000 (!!) in 19989, or around $31,000 (!!!) adjusting for inflation to 2008.)

UDPATE: Reformated the post a bit to hopefully make it easier to follow. Also added in the calculations to current U.S. Dollars for the budgets of the anime I've added at the end.

UPDATE 2: For a visual representation of these numbers:

  1. 1. Something I've touched on my blog before...
  2. 2. I used this page to estimate the translation from yen to dollars for those years, and used this page to adjust that dollar amount for inflation to 2008. All dollar amounts are in U.S. Dollars.
  3. 3. Assuming a rate of ¥120 to $1 in 2001
  4. 4. Assuming a rate of ¥120 to $1 in 1997
  5. 5. Assuming a rate of ¥115 to $1 in 2007
  6. 6. If IMDB is to be believed, at least.
  7. 7. Assuming a rate of ¥130 to $1 in 1998
  8. 8. Assuming a rate of ¥110 to $1 in 2004
  9. 9. Assuming a rate of ¥130 to $1 in 1998

Re: Makoto Shinkai's Movie Budget

On October 21st, 2008 Anonymous (not verified) says:

Just a note on direction and budget and how the two ties in.

Taking mostly from Mandoric's presentation, we know that the opening and ending sequences for a typical TV anime can take up to 50% of its total budget, all inclusive. And in some ways that's the mode of animation Shinkai works on--a music video-like narrative short where you pack a lot of the stuff in a short time frame. It explains why he is still doing opening videos for games, and how his composition has that music video-like nature to them. Even in his 5cm/s shorts, they're a bit like blown-up music videos.

Which is to say that might just be also how he budgeted the movie cost-wise; aka. very cheap.

I don't really trust IMDB's number on some of these things, but the number for 5cm looks right.