Bandai Namco Filmworks’ Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe premiered in Japanese theaters on January 30. Bringing an end to a five-year wait following the trilogy’s first movie in 2021, the new installment has been a massive success, grossing over $9.83 million in the box office in just eleven days. Interestingly, hype for the film has also had an effect elsewhere.
As reported by Rolling Stone Japan, the hit 1987 song “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns N’ Roses saw digital downloads in the iTunes Store jump by 12,166% right after the new film’s premiere. The song rose to the #18 on iTunes’s song rankings, and streaming via platforms like Spotify jumped by 410% compared to the previous week. Not only that but, the band’s debut album, Appetite for Destruction (which includes the song) also peaked at #16 on the iTunes Store’s album rankings, and appeared in Shazam’s Top 200.
The reason behind this is that the new Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway not only uses the song as its credit roll theme, but that this fact was kept completely under wraps right up until the premiere, causing interest to surge at once. While Bandai Namco announced early on that it would be using SZA’s Snooze as the film’s opening song (to the pleasant surprise of many), the ending song by Guns N’ Roses was a complete surprise for theatergoers and fans alike. After the cat was out of the bag, the studio uploaded an official promotional video featuring the song on February 2, garnering over a million views at the time of writing (here’s a link to the video, but note that it pretty much spoils the movie’s finale.)
Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe has been confirmed for a worldwide theatrical release, but premiere dates are TBA.
