Throne of Blood production company Toho
Release
The film was released theatrically in Japan on January 15, 1957, by Toho, and grossed ¥198 million, making it the second-highest-grossing Japanese film of 1957, after Shintoho's Emperor Meiji and the Great Russo-Japanese War, which grossed ¥542.91 million. In the United States, the film was distributed by Brandon Films with English subtitles at 105 minutes and opened on November 22, 1961.Throne of Blood was the first film to be screened at the 1st BFI London Film Festival on October 16, 1957. After the screening, Akira Kurosawa attended a party at film critic Dilys Powell's house, and had dinner with actor Laurence Olivier, and actress Vivien Leigh who were planning on playing Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in a film adaptation of William Shakespeare's Macbeth that never materialized. Olivier told Kurosawa that he had enjoyed watching the film and was impressed by the scene in which Toshiro Mifune's Macbeth is shot by arrows. Isuzu Yamada's acting impressed Leigh, and she asked why Yamada made such little movement when she was mad.In 1991, the film was released in the United States on LaserDisc by The Criterion Collection, and on VHS by Media Home Entertainment. Toho released the film on DVD in Japan in 2002 and on Blu-ray in 2010. In 2013, Madman Entertainment distributed the film on DVD in Region 4. In Region A, The Criterion Collection released the film on Blu-ray in 2014, having released the film on DVD 10 years earlier.In 2018, the film was screened by the National Film Archive of Japan at the Essential 2018 National Film Archive Opening Cinema Memorial in Kyōbashi, Tokyo, along with 9 other Japanese films. In 2021, the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute screened a 4K remaster of the film at the 12th 10am Film Festival.
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