Younger audiences are sending a message to Hollywood: Our tastes in movies are changing.
Over the weekend, an anime film called “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle,” filmed in Japanese and released in North American theaters in subtitled and English-dubbed versions, was a runaway No. 1 at the box office. The movie, about demon exterminators battling inside a supernatural fortress, sold roughly $70 million in tickets in the United States and Canada from Thursday night through Sunday — about 55 percent more than analysts had predicted before its release.
“Young audiences are ready for something fresh and exciting,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers.
“Infinity Castle,” which received strong reviews, set a record for the biggest opening weekend in North America for an anime movie. The previous record-holder was “Pokémon: The First Movie — Mewtwo Strikes Back,” which collected $31 million in 1999, or about $61 million after adjusting for inflation.
“Infinity Castle” also gave Hollywood its biggest opening for any animated movie so far this year, easily surpassing DreamWorks Animation’s “Dog Man,” which took in $36 million over its first few days in theaters in January, and Pixar’s “Elio,” which bombed with a $21 million opening weekend.
The R-rated “Infinity Castle” cost an estimated $20 million to make and came from Crunchyroll, an anime streaming service and studio owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment. Overseas, where it has been in release since July, “Infinity Castle” has taken in an additional $375 million-plus, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data.
The colossal turnout for “Infinity Castle” prompted double-takes in Hollywood, which has been struggling to adapt to changing generational interests. Multiplexes in the United States and Canada had their worst summer since 1981, after adjusting for inflation and excluding the Covid pandemic years, when many theaters were closed for long periods.
The movie establishment was also caught by surprise in June, when another anime movie, “KPop Demon Hunters,” became a megahit on Netflix. Interest in that movie was so strong that Netflix, which typically eschews theatrical releases, distributed a singalong version in theaters in August.
“KPop Demon Hunters Singalong” generated roughly $20 million in opening-weekend ticket sales, an astounding sum for a movie that had been widely available on Netflix for months.
“Seeing KPop culture and anime rise among mainstream movie audiences with this magnitude is significant,” Mr. Gross said. “It’s still new but it looks very real.”
Brooks Barnes covers all things Hollywood. He joined The Times in 2007 and previously worked at The Wall Street Journal.
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