Sony/Crunchyroll’s blockbuster feature Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle smashed all previous weekend opening records for an anime feature with a $70 million opener. The Sony/Crunchyoll release unseated The Conjuring from the number-one spot of the weekend box office chart. The anime opening weekend record was previously held by 1999’s Pokémon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back ($31 million).
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle, the first feature film in the three-part cinematic trilogy representing the final battle of the hugely popular, award-winning shonen series from animation studio ufotable. Based on the manga series by Koyoharu Gotoge (Shueisha’s Weekly Jump), the latest Demon Slayer theatrical showdown is directed by franchise veteran Haruo Sotozaki.
Infinity Castle delivered stellar Rotten Tomatoes numbers — 96% Fresh from critics and 99% Hot from moviegoers, with over a thousand audience ratings — and strong social media buzz. Ahead of the release, the pic became Fandango’s best first-day ticket pre-seller for an anime film of all time.
In Japan, Infinity Castle has stayed in the No. 1 box office spot for eight weeks since its release. The supernatural actioner has racked up over $316.3 million USD, including over $282 million in Japan alone. It is now the third-highest-grossing movie of all time in Japan as well. The previous Demon Slayer movie, Mugen Train, reached the 30 billion yen ($203.16 million) mark in its ninth weekend. The film is screening in theaters across North America, including IMAX and other large format screens.
Infinity Castle’s phenomenal opening weekend performance has resulted in one of the best September weekends of all time at the U.S. box office, with an estimated grand total haul for all films to be around $145 million — that’s a 50% improvement on the same weekend a year ago.
U.S. moviegoers also proved that they still have a friend in Pixar’s Toy Story. Disney’s 30th-anniversary re-release of Pixar’s first theatrical feature collected $3.5 million from 2,375 theaters Stateside. The 1995 movie, which has a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, landed in the fifth spot this weekend. As the film’s director John Lasseter once said in an interview about the movie, “The funny thing with Toy Story, and Woody specifically, is that there just seemed to be a lot of layers, a lot new discoveries to him. Even on the first film, we could sense that he had a history. Woody has some trauma — some baggage that he’s carrying.” The fifth installment of the Toy Story saga, which is directed by Pixar veteran Andrew Stanton and produced by Jessica Choi, is slated for a June 19, 2026 release date.
