September this year at the box office isn’t going to be a blockbuster like last year’s when Warner Bros Beetlejuice Beetlejuice snapped up a $111M opening and $294M domestic take, so the industry will have to take respectable openings as they happen instead. Following the $35M+ expected opening of New Line’s The Conjuring: Last Rites, exhibitors have Crunchyroll‘s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle to look forward to the following weekend on Sept. 12. The movie based on the manga series by Koyoharu Gotouge is racking up record-breaking advance ticket sales for an anime movie since going on sale Friday, estimated to be near $10M for the AMC, Regal and Cinemark combined, per sources.
Separately, Fandango is reporting that they saw the best first-day presales for an anime film of all time, ahead of Funimation’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train (2021) and Crunchyroll’s Jujutsu Kaisen 0 (2022). Those movies posted very notable starts for anime pics with Mugen Train debuting to a whopping $21.2M back in late April 2021 as movie theaters were trying to get back on track post Covid. Jujutsu Kaisen 0 wasn’t too shabby with an $18M opening in May 2022. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Infinity Castle emulates or bests those domestic starts.
Infinity Castle will have early screenings in the U.S. for Crunchyroll Mega and Ultimate Fan tiers starting on Sept. 9 at 7 PM local time in Imax on PLFs. So, keep this in mind about those presales figures before forecasting an opening weekend: This is a narrow, devoted fanbase who shows up very early for Demon Slayer. It’s quite possible this movie’s weekend is quite frontloaded. Anime films stateside are also about their opening weekend pop with the audience receding rapidly in subsequent weekends. That’s just their nature. Jujutsu Kaisen 0 ended its domestic run at $34.5M, however, Mugen Train had a great 2.4x multiple for the genre at $49.9M U.S./Canada.
Also, the momentum here for Infinity Castle isn’t shocking for Demon Slayer fans as it’s the first movie that’s part of a trilogy representing the final battle of the popular shonen series from animation studio ufotable. Already, Infinity Castle has collected close to $193M at the international box office, 75% of that coming from Japan. Infinity Castle opened to $17.5M at No. 1 in eight Southeast Asian markets last weekend. Infinity Castle not only surpassed the entire regional lifetime for Mugen Train but also Frozen II as the highest all-time animated opening for this group of markets at current exchange rates. The opening was over twice as large as other blockbuster animated titles Inside Out 2, Super Mario Bros. Movie, Moana 2, and Ne Zha 2.
Blurb for Infinity Castle: The Demon Slayer Corps are drawn into the Infinity Castle, where Tanjiro, Nezuko, and the Hashira face terrifying Upper Rank demons in a desperate fight as the final battle against Muzan Kibutsuji begins.
Infinity Castle will have prints in Japanese with English subtitles and dubbed in English.
Mugen Train currently holds the record as the highest-grossing Japanese anime movie of all time and the highest-grossing Japanese film at the global box office, garnering over a half billion. It currently ranks as the second-highest grossing Japanese anime film in U.S. box office history.
“We are blown away by the sheer excitement for the arrival of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle through the number of tickets sold in its first day,” said Jerramy Hainline, EVP of Fandango. “The overwhelming response is a true testament to the power of the anime community, and we are so proud to help bring anime into theaters so fans can experience it on the big screen.”
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