Weekend Box Office: CHAINSAW MAN Shreds Expectations with First Place Finish

Key Takeaways

Total 3-Day Weekend Gross:
$74,514,317 | +9.8% Last Week / -20.7% Weekend 43, 2024

Between Taylor Swift a few weeks ago and now this weekend’s Chainsaw Man, October has been all about left-field releases saving the day over more traditional studio fare. The latter anime from Sony and Crunchyroll came out of initial limited tracking to rule the weekend with $17.25M, while new releases Regretting You and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere both faltered. Although we are actually up from the overall box office last week, year-over-year continues its downward trajectory compared to this frame in 2024 when Venom: The Last Dance was a win for Sony with $51M.

• Top Title: Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc (Sony) | $17.25M / 3,003 Screens / $5,744 PSA | Week 1
• Top Opener: Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc (Sony) | $17.25M / 3,003 Screens / $5,744 PSA | Week 1
• Best PSA: Bugonia (Focus Features) | $690K / 17 Screens / $40,588 PSA | Week 1

1. Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc
Sony/Crunchyroll | NEW
$17.25M 3-Day Opening Weekend | $108M Global Total

This year continues to be one in which Asian animation -or anime-esque in the case of Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters- has been a huge disruptor in the marketplace. First, China’s Ne Zha 2 racked up nearly $2B as the top global earner, then last month Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle ruled two weekends, having earned over $132M domestically. Now Sony and Crunchyroll’s R-rated Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc has surged far ahead of expectations to become the #1 movie of the weekend, earning $17.25M from 3,003 screens for a $5,744 PSA.

Chainsaw Man was not in our forecast for the Top 3 since the film was only tracking around $10M earlier in the week. Fan momentum, positive reviews, wildly underperforming competition, and an increased appetite for English-dubbed anime on the big screen domestically contributed to the surge. Grosses were led by premium formats in the US/Canada, including $3.3M from 361 IMAX screens for 19% of the domestic results…

• PLF 24%
• IMAX 19%
• 3D 15%
• 4D 5%

Based on Tatsuki Fujimoto’s popular manga and piggybacking off the first season of the 2022 anime TV series from MAPPA, Toho’s Chainsaw Man film had already earned $68.3M internationally before opening here, following directly on the heels of Infinity Castle‘s success in its native Japan. Here in the U.S., the film earned 96% critical on Rotten Tomatoes alongside a 99% audience score, 5-star PostTrak, and an “A” CinemaScore.

Here’s how the 3-Day looked, including $3.4M in Thursday previews…

• Friday – $8.5M
• Saturday – $5.25M
• Sunday – $3.5M

A great comp for Chainsaw Man would be last year’s unrated Terrifier 3, an October surprise with an $18.9M opening despite very little marketing spend. So far this year Sony Pictures has had little luck with modestly budgeted live-action fare, but their handling of non-traditional anime properties in the theatrical space has helped bolster them to the #4 studio position at a 6.99% share. That’s above Paramount despite that studio’s big tentpoles like Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning. Bottom line: Anime no longer occupies the niche category it was in even a year or two ago.

Overseas, the movie earned an additional $14.7M from 46 total markets and 7,700+ screens, for a global total of $108M including Japan. Poland is still scheduled for release on October 31.

3. Regretting You
Paramount Pictures | NEW
$12.85M 3-Day Opening Weekend | $22.85M Global Total

Our forecasting panel expected more out of Paramount’s romantic drama, Regretting You, but the studio is reporting the Josh Boone film earned only $12.85M from 3,393 screens for a $3,787 PSA, landing at #3. That’s slightly above 2025’s biggest romantic film Materialists ($11.3M debut). Middle American markets over-indexed, such as Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Indianapolis, and Nashville, while coastal markets like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Washington D.C., and San Francisco under-indexed.

Some of the blame might be pinned on the continued negative fallout from last year’s Colleen Hoover adaptation, It Ends With Us, but the fact is, Regretting You only got a 29% critical rating from RT and a “B” CinemaScore, which was probably more damaging. On a positive note, the audience score was at 87% while PostTrak analytics gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Here’s how the 3-Day looked…

• Friday – $5.27M
• Saturday – $4.6M
• Sunday – $2.97M

Audiences were major-majority female at 80% vs 20% male, while 56% fell in the 18 – 34 age grouping, 19% of that being teenagers specifically (likely drawn in for the high school subplot with McKenna Grace and Mason Thames). Here’s how demographics looked…

• 66% – Caucasian
• 22% – Hispanic
• 6% – Black
• 6% – Asian/Other

Overseas Regretting You grossed $10M across the first 43 international markets, including paid previews. Top 3 territories are the UK ($1.75M), Germany ($1.65M), and Australia ($1.4M). Globally the movie is now at $22.85M.

4. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
20th Century Studios | NEW
$9.1M 3-Day Opening Weekend | $16.1M Global Total

20th Century’s music biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere did not go anywhere at the multiplex, opening considerably under industry expectations with $9.1M from 3,460 screens for a $2,630 PSA. That’s below last December’s $11.65M opening for Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown on less screens (2,835).

On the surface you have the issue of this movie being less enthusiastically received than the Dylan biopic at 61% on RT, with a relatively untested movie star in TV’s Jeremy Allen White and perhaps too niche a focus on Bruce Springsteen’s career in revolving mostly on the downbeat Nebraska album. If it had delivered the goods critically or had festival momentum, this might have been a movie better served with a more gradual platform release. Audience score was 85% while CinemaScore was a so-so “B+” on this one.

Here’s how the 3-Day looked, including $850K in Thursday previews…

• Friday – $3.6M
• Saturday – $3.1M
• Sunday – $2.5M

The sexes were pretty evenly split at 52% female/48% male, with the biggest age bracket being the rare 55+ category at 41%.

Internationally Springsteen only delivered $7M from 28 material territories. Top 3 markets were UK ($1.6M), Germany ($1M), and Italy ($0.8M), for a global total of $16.1M. The biopic of The Boss has yet to open in Brazil, Japan, Korea, and most smaller Asian and Latin American territories.

Other Notable Performances

After a #1 opening last week, Universal and Blumhouse’s Black Phone 2 dropped -52% to #2 with an estimated $13M sophomore performance. This is a better second frame hold than last month’s horror sequel Conjuring: Last Rites, which fell -69% on week 2, and on-par with the first Black Phone which dropped -48% and earned $12.2M. The domestic total now stands at $49M, while globally the sequel has earned $80.4M. Expect an even softer drop next frame with zero live-action horror competition going into Halloween.

Focus Features opened filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos’ new black comedy Bugonia starring Emma Stone to an estimated $690K from 17 locations in eight markets (including 8 screens showing the film in 35mm) for a $40,588 PSA. With some sci-fi elements, the remake of Korean film Save the Green Planet! earned 90% from RT critics after extensive festival play, and is expected to expand next frame.

Next Weekend

As if you were not already going to see 100 neighborhood kids dressed as Rumi for Halloween, Netflix has once again seen an opening in the release schedule to drop their phenomenon KPop Demon Hunters back in theaters for the holiday weekend. The KPop Demon Hunters Sing-Along event will also have the benefit of AMC screens this time around. Emma Stone-starrer Bugonia will also expand, but it is expected to be largely a holdover-led weekend.

Sunday Studio Estimates | Weekend 43 – 2025
Total 3-Day Domestic Gross: $74,514,317 | (-20.7% vs 2024)