The Best Japanese Live-Action Film of 2022 Is the Live-Action Kingdom Film Sequel

As of Tuesday, when it was in its 40th day in Japanese theaters, Kingdom II: Harukanaru Daichi e (To Distant Lands), the follow-up movie based on Yasuhisa Hara's Kingdom manga, had sold more than 3.2 million tickets for more than 4.53 billion yen (approximately US$33.10 million). As a result, it has the biggest domestic box office earnings in Japan so far this year. (This year's highest grossing films in Japan were the American movie Top Gun: Maverick, the anime movies One Piece Film Red, and Detective Conan: The Bride of Halloween.)

The movie premiered on July 15 in Japan. In its first two days, the movie sold 527,000 tickets and made 797 million yen (about $5.75 million) to take the top spot in its opening weekend box office.

The cumulative revenue from the two live-action Kingdom movies exceeds 10 billion yen (about US$73.08 million).

The first movie had its world premiere in Japan in April 2019, and in its first three days, it made 690,219,500 yen (about $6.17 million) from the sale of 506,861 tickets. The movie eventually made a cumulative total of 5.73 billion yen (about $53.2 million), selling a total of 4.11 million tickets for 5,471,938,400 yen. The movie debuted in theaters in the US and Canada in August after Funimation screened it at Anime Expo in July 2019.