Demon Slayer’s Box Office Success Proves Anime Is Here To Help Save Movie Theaters The past few years have taught us an awful lot about what the future of moviegoing might look like. It’s an ever-evolving beast in the aftermath of the pandemic but one fairly certain trend has emerged: Anime has found its audience in North America. This has once again firmed up with the release of “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba—To the Hashira Training,” the latest in a series of theatrical releases from the wildly popular anime series. It may not have topped the charts like “Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train” did in 2021, but it helped fill plenty of seats in theaters that otherwise would have been at best sparsely occupied. Released by Crunchyroll in the U.S., the latest “Demon Slayer” film made $11.5 million in its opening frame, trailing only the hit music biopic “Bob Marley: One Love” ($13.5 million), which is in its second weekend. Most impressive of all? The anime had by far the best per-screen average of any wide-release film this weekend, generating just shy of $6,000 on each of the 1,949 screens it played on. That’s very important because more tickets sold per screen equals more popcorn and soda per theater, which is how theaters really make their money. Without “Demon Slayer,” those screens wouldn’t have had nearly as many occupied seats. It’s been a particularly rough start to 2024 at the box office, so this is a welcome win. Interestingly enough, this latest film in the franchise is just a collection of episodes from the show strung together to make a feature. It includes the final episode from the previous season, followed by the premiere of the new season, which has yet to air. This is fairly common in the world of anime, but the fact that what is ostensibly a TV show is propping up the box office is unquestionably fascinating. Anime to the rescue (again) This is far more than just a fluke at the North American box office. “Demon Slayer” has now earned nearly $80 million in the U.S., as a franchise, since 2021. That’s a meaningful amount of money, particularly given that these movies have often arrived on otherwise relatively dead weekends when theaters could use the help. We also had “Dragon Ball: Super Hero” topping the charts in 2022, giving another long-running, beloved series its day in the sun on the big screen. Perhaps more telling was the prosperity of “The Boy and the Heron” last year. Hayao Miyazaki is an absolute legend but he had never seen success on that level, with the film ultimately making nearly $46 million in the States. It was one of the biggest surprises of the second half of 2023, right alongside “Godzilla Minus One.” Yes, these anime movies often drop off dramatically on their second weekend, but it hardly matters. Ticket sales in the U.S. are often just icing on the cake for the distributors as these projects aren’t dependent on this market for success. Yet, with American studios and theaters embracing anime (and Japanese imports in general), we’re seeing a reliable market emerge. Even if we get back to a place of relative normalcy at the box office, and if things ever stabilize, it’s likely that these anime releases are here to stay. This audience turns up reliably time and time again now that they are finally being catered to. In short? It’s anime to the rescue. “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba—To the Hashira Training” is in theaters now.
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