Demon Slayer pulls down $70 million for a record opening for an anime film

[Jman]

https://deadline.com/2025/09/box-office-demon-slayer-infinity-castle-conjuring-long-walk-1236529652/
 

37% Latino audience.  Latinos are never beating the weeb allegations.

[Mr. Idea Box]

Seventy million dollars. For the latest Demon Slayer movie.

I am not dunking on that film. That is a legitimate surprise, even regarding the past decade of anime in the US.

[[classic swim]]

A guy in Arizona was arrested for pissing on a child during a screening of this.

[scoobdog]

It was really fucking long.

[Jman]

6 hours ago, scoobdog said:

It was really fucking long.

It's basically 3 stories parallel.

Spoiler

The recurring motif seemed to be revenge.  Even Zenitsu was completely locked in for being in a samurai revenge movie.  No jokes, no weird flirting, just straight up "You killed my master", stuff right out of a Shaw Brothers film.  

 

[scoobdog]

1 hour ago, Jman said:

It's basically 3 stories parallel.

  Hide contents

The recurring motif seemed to be revenge.  Even Zenitsu was completely locked in for being in a samurai revenge movie.  No jokes, no weird flirting, just straight up "You killed my master", stuff right out of a Shaw Brothers film.  

 

Spoiler

Well, his master and his fiancée who is kind of thrown in there to give it some emotional weight, though neither is really fleshed out properly.

My real issue is that they tried to make it like four back to back to back to back episodes and the pacing got distracting.  You don’t necessarily care that there are charters that are unused because you’re supposed to know them anyway, but they still remind you that this is continuation of an episodic narrative and the arc has no real beginning or end.

[Toonamiguy321]

17 hours ago, [classic swim] said:

A guy in Arizona was arrested for pissing on a child during a screening of this.

 

8 hours ago, scoobdog said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Well, his master and his fiancée who is kind of thrown in there to give it some emotional weight, though neither is really fleshed out properly.

My real issue is that they tried to make it like four back to back to back to back episodes and the pacing got distracting.  You don’t necessarily care that there are charters that are unused because you’re supposed to know them anyway, but they still remind you that this is continuation of an episodic narrative and the arc has no real beginning or end.

Because despite their claim of not doing so, they absolutely are going to chop this up into episodes for a TV run in a few years. Just making it clean and easy. 

[scoobdog]

30 minutes ago, Toonamiguy321 said:

 

Because despite their claim of not doing so, they absolutely are going to chop this up into episodes for a TV run in a few years. Just making it clean and easy. 

Nothing clean or easy about that.  It would still have to be re worked to be an actual episodic ark.

[naraku360]

23 hours ago, Mr. Idea Box said:

I am not dunking on that film.

I am.

Because it's Demon Slayer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And Demon Slayer sucks.

[Dark_Cloud_Overhead]

When I saw that number I had to do a double take. Then I thought, okay that's gotta be worldwide, right? Surely that can't be what it made just here domestically. But nope, it's for reals. First anime movie to ever top the U.S. box office. Granted, it didn't have much competition, but still it did so well that it wasn't even close. Just imagine what the third film is gonna do.

Anyway, I want to see this so bad, but I haven't gotten to see Hashira Training yet, so...

[Jman]

How people want Hollywood to react - "You know, maybe there's a market for animation besides ugly looking comedian driven sitcoms, baby shows, and therapy session cartoons for women with weird colored hair!"

How Hollywood will react - 

[Mr. Idea Box]

57 minutes ago, Jman said:

How people want Hollywood to react - "You know, maybe there's a market for animation besides ugly looking comedian driven sitcoms, baby shows, and therapy session cartoons for women with weird colored hair!"

How Hollywood will react - 

I hate how right you are in this case. I really do.

[Top Gun]

1 hour ago, Jman said:

How people want Hollywood to react - "You know, maybe there's a market for animation besides ugly looking comedian driven sitcoms, baby shows, and therapy session cartoons for women with weird colored hair!"

How Hollywood will react - 

Hell I'd watch that. 

[Jman]

 

There’s a greater than zero chance this ends up making more money than Fantastic Four, for roughly a tenth of the price.

[naraku360]

4 hours ago, Jman said:

 

There’s a greater than zero chance this ends up making more money than Fantastic Four, for roughly a tenth of the price.

The worst timeline.

[PokeNirvash]

I know Shueisha's gonna get the majority of the profits that'll wind up trickling back down to the industry, but I hope ufotable gets big enough a share to do an ambitious original project once they've finally washed their hands of Demon Slayer as a franchise. 

[Blatch]

On 9/18/2025 at 10:25 AM, Jman said:

Looks like Mr. White Pharaoh's gonna have some competition.

[Jman]

Someone is going through their teen actor Rolodex to cast live action Tanjiro as we speak.

[Mr. Idea Box]

4 hours ago, Jman said:

Someone is going through their teen actor Rolodex to cast live action Tanjiro as we speak.

A thousand dollars says they cast Tom Holland as Tanjiro.

[Sketch]

Channing Tatum put in the work. I won't say he's on par with the seasoned VAs in this dub but he didn't phone it in. I flet like he fit Keizo pretty well. Lucien Dodge absolutely stole the show as Akusaka but the raw emotion from Zach Agular was the best he's done yet as Tanjiro IMO and Aleks Le as locked in Zenitsu was pretty great too.

I honestly don't know how well these would work as episodes so it was probably better they did films.

It did feel long though. I kept wondering where they were gonna pause.

Demon Slayer's tendencies to shove the backstories of demons into their dying moments or in the middle of their final fights doesn't always feel satisfactory. Doma's back story and upper sixth's just kinda dragged things out while oddly enough Akasuka's backstory while being significantly longer felt much more worth seeing. I guess that's the difference between demons with personalities that are interesting and demons that lack personality. A whole bunch of revenge was going on in these fights but only one felt like it mattered in the slightest.

Despite how long this was it also feels like they probably should have kept more of the lead in sequence of the slayers attacking Muzan before they started falling into the infinity castle. It feels really abrupt as it is.

As an aside, I recently started reading the manga of Demon Slayer and boy does it give off a way different vibe than the anime. It's not just because of the animation either. I feel the anime staff put a lot more oomph into the dialogue and everything feels much more grandiose. I was surprised by how different the anime and manga feel compared to say Naruto or One Piece which feel pretty much the same as their counterparts despite extended scenes and annoying filler.

[Jman]