Infinity Castle Eyes $56M-$60M Anime Record

SATURDAY AM: Forget about the biggest anime opening of all-time stateside, that’s easy. What Sony has is their biggest opening of not just 2025 to date, but also arguably bigger than any of its hits last year in Crunchyroll’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle which stands to open to $56M-$60M+ after a massive $33M Friday.

Given the front-loaded nature of anime movies, sources are forecasting that Saturday drops about 41% against that Friday/previews number for a $19.5M take today. That said, there are some out there who believe this castle could spiral upward to the heavens to a $70M take.

Infinity Castle not only outstrips this year’s start of Sony’s 28 Years Later ($30M), but it’s bigger than last year’s Venom: The Last Dance ($51M), It Ends With Us ($50M) and likely Bad Boys: Ride or Die ($56.5M). The last big opening for Sony was June 2023’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse with $120.6M.

Talk about a secret weapon that no one noticed — and by that we mean, like, two months ago. It wasn’t apparent Sony had a killer swordsman at the B.O. until advance tickets went on sale, notching an anime record (over 5 days) with $10M for the top three circuits. For those who don’t know what a Demon Slayer is, such as myself, I’m told the je ne sais quoi magnetism of this movie for fans is that it stands as a pivotal point in the franchise; essentially, it’s Empire Strikes Back. CinemaScore audience gave the movie a solid A, the best grade recorded by the exit poll firm for a Demon Slayer movie (the 2023 and 2024 editions receiving B+s).

The other magic trick with these Crunchyroll movies is that it doesn’t take much media spend to pull in this audience, with the label knowing where to reach the faithful, head on.

iSpot shows that Sony spent very little in linear ($74K) next to Lionsgate’s $3.5M shell out to promote The Long Walk and Focus Features’ $5.7M spend for Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. Sony’s linear campaign reached 17M TV ad impressions, as opposed to Long Walk‘s 159M and Downton Abbey‘s 962M. Sony ran spots for Infinity Castle on TBS, Adult Swim and TNT on shows such as WWE Friday Night Smackdown, AEW Dynamite, AEW Collision, Futurama and Dragon Ball DAIMA.

PLFs and Imax are repping a huge 44% of Infinity Castle‘s weekend with an even play across the country, but best in the West. The Regal Irvine Spectrum has already racked up close to $100K (wow). Huge turnout by Hispanic and Latino audiences at 37%, followed by 27% Caucasian, 16% Black and 14% Asian. 57% overall male skew. The movie has already broken local opening records abroad for an anime movie with an overall foreign total of $350M per The Numbers, the bulk of that from Japan.

Together, Infinity Castle, which is pulling in 71% among 18-34 moviegoers, and the second weekend of Conjuring: Last Rites ($27M in second) are eating Long Walk‘s lunch which is pulling in 61% with 18-34 with $11M-$12.5M in fourth place. Infinity Castle also has, inside its walls, the under 25 demo at 48% as opposed to Long Walk‘s 29%. Infinity Castle planted its flag on the schedule first, quite evident in March and Lionsgate followed with The Long Walk dating its release back in April. In hindsight, Long Walk should have taken a hike to another weekend, but again, no one knew how big Demon Slayer would be. That said, the opening here for Long Walk is just below that of other recent Stephen King movie adaptations, this year’s Monkey ($14M) and 2019’s Doctor Sleep ($14.1M). Lionsgate calculators, which budgeted this movie at a net $20M, had to take those comps into account. Despite having the tagline “The Task Is Simple: Walk or Die,” no one is running out in Red Army numbers to watch this death walk movie about young men versus the Man. Despite having Hunger Games‘ Francis Lawrence’s name on the pic as director, and rising genre scribe JT Mollner, the pic stars plenty of fresh faces and carries what looks to be an anti-military message in its trailers, which is bound to upset the middle of the country. That said, the movie’s best areas of play are the East, Midwest and West. AMC Burbank is the top grossing venue at $23K. There’s a handful of PLFs, but they’re not doing much. Diversity demos were 55% Caucasian, 18% Latino and Hispanic, 17% Black and 7% Asian.

That said, Focus Features’ decision to open Downton Abbey: Grand Finale as counterprogramming to the young kid movies is a genius distribution release maneuver, the threequel’s opening at $19.5M in third is already higher than the series previous title, New Era ($16M). The studios don’t counterprogram enough to opposing demo movies: You can’t just date ’em on the calendar, but you have to put some marketing heft behind such titles to open them to a respectable level like we’re seeing here. Over 55 here is a great 56% with an overall heavy female skew of 72%, on par with other Downton movies. Grand Finale lands the third straight A for a Downton Abbey movie. Grand Finale isn’t just a big city movie or one for the coasts, but is attracting those in the East, South, Midwest and Mountain regions with AMC Lincoln Square the top grossing venue with just over $31K.

Not doing well at all unfortunately is Bleecker Street’s release of Rob Reiner’s Spinal Tap II: The End Continues which is opening to around $1.55M at 1,920 theaters — not very good for a wide release with a per theater of $807. Too bad, as there was a lot of Hollywood love for this movie the other night at its Tuesday premiere with a standing ovation from Jack Black, Jay Roach, Nick Kroll, Jim Gianopulos, Billy Crystal and more. Note that this was a distribution deal for Bleecker Street, which is only on the hook for P&A. Reiner’s Spinal Tap spurred the Christopher Guest 1990s-into-early aughts revolution of mockumentaries, which were always arthouse plays, mostly platform releases. The top opening for a Guest mockumentary was 2003’s A Mighty Wind with $2.1M at — get this — 133 theaters. It’s unfortunate that nowadays it takes more screens to get about the same size gross for a specialty release like this. The overall play here, like the original 1984 movie, This Is Spinal Tap, is home ancillary. That’s where Spinal Tap cultivated its generations of followers. The few who showed up, of course fans, gave it an A-. Seventy-four percent guys, with those over 45 at 60%, meaning the franchise’s core Gen X and older. Caucasians were 83% followed by 8% Latino and Hispanic, 5% Asian and 1% Black.

The entire marketplace is coming in around $147M for all movies, +57% of the same frame a year ago when Beetlejuice Beetlejuice pulled in a second frame of $51.3M.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON: Sony/Crunchyroll’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle is a beast with the town gonzo over box office forecasts. On the conservative side, it’s looking like a $28 million Friday (including $11.4M previews) and a $45M three-day cume at 3,315 theaters, which is a definite record opening for anime movie.

However, there are others who believe Friday is around $35M (including previews), with a $60M-plus weekend in store.

The lower forecasts stem from the philosophy that the audience for this movie is niche-focused, limited to Demon Slayer devotees, and that no audience expansion is possible. While the last Demon Slayer opened to north of $21M and came out when theaters were reopening from the pandemic in the spring of 2021, Dragon Ball Super: Super Broly (which posted a similar opening), saw a -46% drop in its Saturday with $5.8M next to its $10.9M Friday. Marketing has been quite thrifty on this anime movie, on par with other Crunchyroll titles. That’s the other amaze-amaze about this movie.

Conjuring: Last Rites from New Line/Warner Bros, per estimates, is coming in at $29.7M at 3,802 locations, which is where we saw it. That would make it off 65% for a running 10-day total by Sunday of $134.6M, very close to topping the original movie’s cume, which is the franchise’s highest at $137.4M.

Third belongs to Focus Features’ Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, which has a shot at $20M but right now is at $19.5M in third at 3,694 sites. That is higher than the bow of 2022’s previous chapter New Era after a $9.2M Friday (including $2.6M previews).

Fourth is Lionsgate’s The Long Walk at 2,815, looking at $11M-$13.5M after a $5M Friday. The movie, which largely stars a fresh-faced cast, was made for net $20M.

Disney’s 30th anniversary rerelease of Pixar’s Toy Story is eyeing $1M today for a $3.4M weekend in estimates at 2,375 theaters.

FRIDAY AM, AFTER EXCLUSIVE: Previews for Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle came in at $11.4 million. That’s a record for an anime movie, beating 2022’s Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero which did $4.3M in previews before a $10.9M Friday and $21.1M opening. By the way, that figure for Infinity Castle is for both Tuesday fan and Thursday night shows.

RelishMix counts 200 million followers in the Infinity Castle social media universe across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X. No surprise that chatter is positive given that RT audience score Thursday night, which continues to stand at 99%. “Hype centers on animation and Zenitsu/Akaza moments; with comments exclaiming ‘The animation is peak’ and ‘Zenitsu is LOCKED THE HELL IN’ and ‘Absolute mf cinema.’ Event behavior is strong with fans exclaiming how they’ve booked tickets at full capacity theaters, and calling the trailer ‘godlike’ as well as shoutouts to the LiSA and Aimer theme songs.”

Focus Features’ Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale counted $2.6M in all previews from Wednesday and Thursday at 2,900 venues. Wednesday paid sneak previews alone on large-format screens were $1M.

Lionsgate’s The Long Walk came in at $1.3M. Audience reaction on RT audience score is good at 86%.

Again, this weekend is expected to be the best mid-September frame at the box office for all movies post-Covid, exceeding $100M and besting the $93.7M from the same frame a year ago.

New Line’s The Conjuring: Last Rites posted $3.3M on Thursday, -23% for a first week of $104.9M.

EXCLUSIVE: Sony/Crunchyroll’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle, as we knew all along, is having a great night, with preview estimates at $10M at 2,800 sites, maybe a little more by sunrise. Showtimes, boosted by Imax and PLFs, began at 4 p.m.

That amount of cash is about equal to the pic’s first five days of advance ticket sales, which by the way, repped a record for an anime movie.

That Thursday night figure is almost as much as Five Nights at Freddy’s previews ($10.3M in 2023), it’s $500K less than Oppenheimer‘s ($10.5M, 2023) and higher than last fall’s Joker: Folie à Deux ($7M). Not that those are any hard comps; it’s just interesting to juxtapose the amount of cash this anime pic is racking up. Why are fans rushing to see this movie? Because it’s the first in a trilogy. The record opening for anime movie belongs to Warner Bros’ Pokémon: The First Movie, which debuted to $31M in 1999.