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Poster for 20th Century Boys 1: Beginning of the End
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Released
2008 · FILM

20th Century Boys 1: Beginning of the End

Directed by
Kimura Hisashi, Yukihiko Tsutsumi
Written by
Yasushi Fukuda, Takashi Nagasaki
Runtime
142 min
Language
JA
AdventureFantasyMystery

Synopsis

In 1969, Kenji, an elementary school kid and his friends built a secret base during their summer holidays. They fantasized that they had to fight villains who were out to conquer the world and wrote them in the Book of Prophecies. Years later in 1997, Kenji becomes a convenience store manager and leads a regular life after giving up his dreams to become a rock star. His boring life is suddenly turned upside down when his old classmate dies mysteriously and an entire family in the neighbourhood disappears. At the same time, a religious cult and its mysterious leader, Friend emerges and a strange chain of events duplicating exactly the events described in the Book of Prophecies follow. Is this the beginning of the end of the world? Who is Friend?

Credits

Actors
Editor
Director of Photography
Writers
Directors

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 23

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Nobuyuki ItoShot by Satoru KarasawaScored by Ryomei Shirai

Box Office

2008 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 1.9× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$38.2M

Budget$20.0M
Worldwide gross$38.2M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • 20th Century Boysde
  • 20th Century Boys 1: Beginning of the Enden
  • 20th Century Boys: Cap. 1 El principio del fines
  • 20th Century Boysfr

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