Demon Slayer tops North American box office with record anime opening of $90 million

LOS ANGELES – Younger audiences are sending a message to Hollywood: Our tastes in movies are changing.

Over the weekend, anime film Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba Infinity Castle – filmed in Japanese and released in North American cinemas in subtitled and English-dubbed versions – was a runaway No. 1 at the box office.

The movie, about demon exterminators battling inside a supernatural fortress, sold roughly US$70 million (S$90 million) in tickets in the United States and Canada from Sept 11 to 14 – about 55 per cent more than analysts had predicted before its release.

“Young audiences are ready for something fresh and exciting,” said Mr David Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box-office numbers.

Infinity Castle, which received strong reviews, set a record for the biggest opening weekend in North America for an anime movie. The previous record-holder was Pokemon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back (1998), which collected US$31 million in 1999, or about US$61 million after adjusting for inflation.

Infinity Castle also gave Hollywood its biggest opening for any animated movie so far in 2025, easily surpassing DreamWorks Animation’s Dog Man, which took in US$36 million over its first few days in cinemas in January, and Pixar’s Elio, which bombed with a US$21 million opening weekend in June.

Infinity Castle cost an estimated US$20 million to make and came from Crunchyroll, an anime streaming service and studio owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment. Overseas, where it has been in release since July, it has taken in an additional amount of over US$375 million, according to Comscore, which compiles box-office data.

The colossal turnout for Infinity Castle prompted double-takes in Hollywood, which has been struggling to adapt to changing generational interests. Multiplexes in the US and Canada had their worst summer since 1981, after adjusting for inflation and excluding the Covid-19 pandemic years, when many cinemas were closed for long periods.

The movie establishment was also caught by surprise in June, when another anime movie, KPop Demon Hunters, became a megahit on Netflix. Interest in that movie was so strong that Netflix, which typically eschews theatrical releases, distributed a sing-along version in cinemas in August.

KPop Demon Hunters – Sing-Along generated roughly US$20 million in opening-weekend ticket sales, an astounding sum for a movie that had been widely available on Netflix for months.

“Seeing K-pop culture and anime rise among mainstream movie audiences with this magnitude is significant,” Mr Gross said. “It’s still new, but it looks very real.” NYTIMES