Animation sales in Iran

The animation The Prince of Rome, with box office revenue of more than 5 billion tomans and a score of 4/6 on IMDb, and the animation Filshah, with box office revenue of more than 7 billion tomans and a score of 1/5 on IMDb, are the record holders of Iran's animation industry.

Although animations such as Tehran 1500, Fehrest-e Moqaddas, Mobarak, and others were also screened in Iran's cinemas, their box office revenue was not like that of the two works above. The amount of box office revenue depends on the quality of the animation, the time of release, the length of the run, the number of halls, and so on. For example, Fehrest-e Moqaddas had a successful foreign release, but inside the country only five halls were allocated to it.

The producer of The Dolphin Boy announced that producing animation in Iran is a thousand times cheaper than producing animation outside Iran. This work was produced in Russia and for its release had 2,700 cinema halls in Russia at its disposal for two weeks. This film's box office revenue was more than 7/1 billion dollars. In return, Iran's cinema placed only five halls at The Dolphin Boy's disposal. The shortage of animation halls and screenings is among the problems of this industry.

The director of Escape from Heaven, who has experience of appearing at world festivals, says: over the past three decades, Iranian animation's box office revenue in the world, and the income from it, has been a hundred times the box office of Iranian feature films in the world. So why is a number of dedicated halls not allocated for the screening of animation?

The animation industry, unlike the cinema industry, has no celebrities, and animation characters become famous after broadcast and through advertising, merchandising, and wide theatrical release. The animation industry's first need in order to capture a share of theatrical exhibition is to have more halls and screenings. After that, it can be assessed whether animation in Iran has an audience or not.