Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle
Crunchyroll
Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle set a number of records in Japan, but now it’s about to set another one in the US as well.
Last weekend, Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle opened with $70 million, a record for any anime movie released domestically. But now it’s about to break a second record, the highest domestic total for any anime movie. Even with a large 70% or 80% drop, the film will top $100 million domestically this weekend, which beats out the Pokémon movie in 1999 that drew $85.7 million in total.
Then it will tie a second record, one first set by another film in the series, Demon Slayer: Mugen Train. It will be the only anime movie alongside Mugen Train to win the domestic box office two weekends in a row. Infinity Castle may only make $15-20 million this weekend, but that will be enough to hold off the new (very bad) horror movie, Him.
As for Mugen Train, despite its $486 million in earnings around the world, it only earned $49 million domestically, which will be less than half of what Infinity Castle will earn, as keep in mind this is only its second weekend. Infinity Castle has already made $419 million worldwide and again, has only been out in a large number of regions since last weekend. That total will climb and surpass Mugen Train in a week or two, most likely.
Demon Slayer Mugen Train
Funimation
It seems fairly obvious that Ufotable’s plan to divide up the end of Demon Slayer into three movies instead of just doing another season was the right call in terms of raking in cash. If these numbers hold, between three films over the course of 4-6 years or whatever it might be, it may earn a billion and a half dollars, if not more, if the final movie pushes things much higher than the others.
These records in the US are for anime, not any animated project, however, as there are dozens and dozens of those that have earned more. But this goes to show that mainstream viewing of anime in the West is dramatically increasing over time, and we’re seeing that in terms of huge investments in places like Sony’s Crunchyroll and Netflix, which keeps pouring out (often rather good) anime series.
The success of Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle is shocking but not surprising. It’s one of the biggest, most-beloved anime series in history and this is the show racing toward its epic conclusion. Everyone is showing up around the world, as they should.
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Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/09/20/demon-slayer-infinity-castle-will-break-a-26-year-old-pokmon-box-office-record/
