The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Financial decision · 2024
Toei financed a 2.5B yen film with Japan's first movie security token, and lost most of it
Takarajima adapted a Naoki Prize-winning novel with a star cast, but reached only ~680M yen box office by December, leaving retail investors facing a loss.
Toei · 2024-09-19
What happened
Toei distributed Takarajima, a big-budget adaptation of Junbun Shindo's Naoki Prize-winning novel starring a prestige cast, financing part of its roughly 2.5 billion yen production cost through Japan's first-ever film-backed security token, opening the investment to retail investors betting on the film's box office.
The film opened across 378 screens in September 2024 to a weak roughly 160 million yen over its first three days, landing seventh in the weekend rankings against strong competing releases that split the available audience.
Box office continued to underperform through the following weeks, and by December the film's cumulative gross reached only about 680 million yen — roughly a quarter of its production budget — putting the security token fund's retail investors at risk of losing part of their invested principal, even with revenue above 1 billion yen already assumed insufficient to guarantee full investor returns.
Why it happened
- Financing through a public investment product raised the stakes of a box office shortfall beyond the studio's own balance sheet to retail investors.
- The release date placed the film in direct competition with other strong titles that fragmented the available audience.
- The prestige of the source novel and cast wasn't matched by an opening-weekend marketing push able to distinguish it from competing releases.
- The fund structure needed box office well above what even a solid theatrical run could deliver, leaving little room for a weak opening.
The lesson
Financing a film through a public investment product doesn't reduce the underlying box office risk — it just spreads that risk onto people who can least absorb a shortfall.
Aftermath
Takarajima's underperformance became a cautionary case in Japanese financial media coverage of film-backed security tokens, raising questions about using retail investment products to fund inherently risky theatrical releases.
Sources
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