The anime movie "Detective Conan: The Million-dollar Pentagram," based on Gosho Aoyama's manga, premiered in 515 theaters nationwide on April 12, recording the highest audience attendance and box office receipts on its opening weekend in the series' history. This 27th installment aims to break all previous records and has started off as a mega-hit.

This edition employed an unprecedented approach: it was claimed that Kaito Kid had 'stolen' the invitations and film for the preview screening. Consequently, for the first time in the history of the "Detective Conan" movies, there was no pre-release screening. Typically, completion screenings featuring voice actor appearances and Shogakukan combined preview screenings would be held across various cities, anticipated annually by fans.

It is still fresh in our memories how "THE FIRST SLAM DUNK" and Hayao Miyazaki's first film in ten years, "THE BOY AND THE HERON," both succeeded without any advance screenings.

For the "Detective Conan" movie series, released annually (except in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic), audience and box office growth have been consistently robust. The growth in recent years has been remarkable; the previous film, released in April of last year, "Detective Conan: The Submarine in Black Iron," was the first to surpass 10 billion yen in box office earnings, eventually reaching 13.88 billion yen and setting a series record. The new film, without preview screenings, was a gamble.

When we reached out to Hiroki Miura, the promotional producer for "Detective Conan" at Toho's advertising department, about the decision not to hold screenings, we received the following response:

"As stated in our February announcement, the decision not to conduct a preview screening was made after extensive discussions with the production committee, motivated by our desire for everyone to experience the film without spoilers from the first day of release.

We were prepared for various opinions from fans who look forward to our films each year, but it seems they embraced our intent and helped create excitement. It feels like we were able to craft the promotion together with everyone and have fun doing it.

Experiencing the anticipation and excitement together with the cast, staff, and fans up to the opening day was beneficial for this film and likely contributed to its huge success.

When the film was stolen, I was chilled, thinking I might lose my job, but now I am grateful to Kaito Kid for giving us a moment to pause and reflect."

Due to the absence of screenings and the secrecy maintained, as soon as the date changed to April 12th, tickets for the earliest screenings at midnight in 23 theaters across 10 prefectures sold out instantly. Despite being a weekday, the film attracted 638,119 viewers and earned 962.78 million yen just on the 12th.

Over the weekend, the film attracted 2,274,333 people, earning 3.35 billion yen, achieving 106.5% of the previous work's figures. "Detective Conan: The Million-dollar Pentagram" has started off as the best in the series, with further success expected during the Golden Week.