Ghibli's Arrietty Earns US$18 Million After 5th Weekend

Let's see, we get very little backstory on the borrows themselves, and Shawn was extremely dull. Not to mention the voice actor was monotone the entire movie.

But really, it was the ending that solidified this movie as sub-par. It was completely rushed, which I'll leave it at that for those who haven't seen it yet. Suffice to say, it could have been much better.

Nope, the success can be attributed to Disney, who backed the film with a strong marketing and a solid release window for the family-friendly that wasn't overshadowed by blockbusters.

I wish it would, but unfortunately it likely never will. Disney pushed the movie extremely hard as I've seen commercials and posters practically everywhere. It had practically no competition for child friendly shows as well until The Lorax came out.

@ranma1, Not mainstream yet; still quite a niche market really which is why we won't see high grosses at the box office... yet.

The main problem is that here, in North America, anime is viewed the same way as American 'cartoons' just purely for children.

Not really, Disney has backed previous movies from Ghibli before such as Ponyo, Spirited Away and a few others and none of them were ever as pushed as much as this was. It also helps that the art design was very down to Earth for the most part while some of Ghibli's previous works have been kinda off the wall.

One could argue Anime has been mainstream for years, if not well over a decade. Anime has been sold in most media stores for some time now...as far as movies, Disney appears to have found it to be profitable enough to push these types of movies.

It's not mainstream until there's a TV show and more merchandise than we can count.

@synGamer, I am going to have to, in some ways, disagree with you on anime's mainstream status here in America. While the market has grown considerably over the years; its appeal is still mostly a niche thing.

But I do think that it is still poised to possibly have larger gains in 5 years or so.