How long does it take to produce a Dragon Ball film in general?

[Scientist Fu]

Hello! Is there any official source about it? does it take a year or more depending on how long it lasts?

I'd gladly appreciate it if somebody could help me out, thanks.

[Jord]

It varies. Back in the 90s they were churning them out yearly. The more recent movies took more time.

[kemuri07]

It helps that most of these films tend to run under 45min. Pretty sure the longest ones were the Broly films.

Looking at Wikipedia, seems like Toei released two dragonball movies a year from 1990 - 1995. As someone who has absolutely no idea what he's talking about, I have to imagine Toei crunched the shit out of animators just to make that happen.

Now, expectations are different: DB movies are more than just ads for the tvshow/manga, and are expected to be blockbusters in their own right.

[WittyUsername]

I know that the older movies from the 80s and 90’s took many months to make, but probably less than a year. The newer ones definitely take longer to make. I’m guessing maybe close to two years, if not more.

[JulieYBM]

Your average television anime script takes two weeks to write. One might think that Toriyama would need 8-10 weeks to write one of the modern films but bare in mind he is not a properly trained anime writer. He could very well need more time.

Storyboarding usually takes 3-4 weeks for a television anime episode. At the same time, some directors can storyboard faster if their vision is clear, like Yuasa's vision for Ping-Pong let him storyboard every episode in ten days each (if memory serves).

Television animation usually takes a month and a half for a single episode. Higher-quality animation usually gets more time, though, so depending upon staff availability a film might wind up with ~8-9 months for animation but bare in mind that standards mean nothing in an industry constantly abusing animators. It's a case-by-case basis.

I know that the BORUTO: Naruto the Movie (2015) production was so hasitily put together that it was greenlit and finished in only eight (8) months. The production was Hell and to maintain a high-quality the director—the legendary Yamashita Hiroyuki—overworked himself to the point of being taken to the hospital—by ambulance—multiple times.

If I recall correctly the scripts for the original 1980s-1990s Dragon Ballnfilms were still being worked on up until four months before the film was screened. This would mean a very, very short turn around, which we can see in several of the films needing multiple storyboard artists or assistant animation supervisors.

It takes time and I would just not expect these things to just happen quickly, especially if the studio has other commitments.

[Scientist Fu]

Thanks to you all for your replies! I did my own research and saw that they needed +/- 10 months to make a single episode (only if the information is correct)

"How long does it take to make an episode of Super?" "6 months starting from the scripting stage, and 4 months for the animation alone." This news might take you fans by surprise at first given how they responded to the first arc of the series.

So, I'm assuming a movie should take more than that, but that's just my assumption. Anyway, thanks again.

[Hellspawn28]

Animation takes a long time to work on. Super Hero probably took three years to work on and would probably come out sooner if it wasn't for Covid.