The second Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway movie is making its overseas move, with Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe earning an estimated US$810,000 during its U.S. opening weekend.
For a long-running mecha franchise like Gundam, that number is interesting not because it is blockbuster-level, but because it shows there is still a committed cinema audience for serious anime sci-fi outside Japan. Gundam is not exactly “casual family movie night” material, bro. This is dense Universal Century drama, political tension, war trauma, and mobile suits doing expensive damage. So when a Hathaway film can still pull fans into theatres overseas, that says something.
The film had already performed strongly in Japan. It opened there on January 30 across 365 theatres, after being delayed from its planned 2025 release. In its first three days, it ranked at #1, selling 511,500 tickets and earning 849,068,760 yen — around US$5.43 million.
By March 1, the movie had reached 2,303,090,620 yen in Japan, roughly US$14.49 million. That pushed it into a pretty respectable spot in Gundam box office history, sitting at #4 among Gundam films in Japan. The films ahead of it include Mobile Suit Gundam Seed FREEDOM, which made over 5.3 billion yen, Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX -Beginning-, and the classic Mobile Suit Gundam III: Encounters in Space.
For Malaysian and SEA fans, the main question now is simple: will numbers like this help convince more distributors to treat Gundam films as proper theatrical releases in our region? Anime movies have become more visible in local cinemas over the past few years, but outside the biggest titles, releases can still be limited, short, or heavily dependent on fan demand. Gundam fans here are loyal — from Gunpla collectors to UC timeline diehards — but the franchise still sits in that “if you know, you know” zone compared to Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, or One Piece.
Most of the core cast and staff returned from the first Hathaway film. New additions on the production side include Yuichi Kuboki, who joined Takako Suzuki as a color key artist. Yoshinori Sayama, known for work connected to Macross Plus, Cowboy Bebop, and Mobile Suit Gundam UC, is credited for display designs. Yoshihisa Ōyama served as the new film’s compositing director of photography, while Manabu Kamitōno directed the visual effects.
ANN’s box office roundup also noted two other anime-adjacent theatrical updates. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, the sequel from Nintendo, Illumination, and Universal Pictures, ranked at #6 in its seventh U.S. weekend with US$4.45 million, bringing its U.S. total to US$418,619,015. Meanwhile, GKIDS’ limited two-night U.S. screening of Shōji Kawamori’s original anime film Labyrinth (Meikyū no Shiori) earned US$39,935 across May 10 and 11.
Different scale, different audience — but all three results point to the same thing: theatrical anime and anime-adjacent films are no longer one-lane business. From Mario’s mass-market power to Gundam’s hardcore fanbase and Kawamori’s niche creator appeal, cinemas are still a battleground worth watching.
Source: Anime News Network