‘Demon Slayer’ Closes In On ‘Raya’ At U.S. Box Office

Another week, another dollop of good news for the Demon Slayer movie. The anime sensation has added another $3 million in its third weekend in North America, for a domestic cume of $39.565M (all box office figures from this weekend are estimates).

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train (to give the film its full title) came second this weekend, behind the new Jason Statham release Wrath of Man. It is now within touching distance of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Raya and the Last Dragon, which earned $1.72M in its tenth weekend for a total of $43.672M. It’s unheard of for an R-rated, foreign-language anime title to be almost neck-and-neck with a Disney release.

Of course, box office numbers don’t paint the full picture: Raya was simultaneously released on Disney+ for a $30 premium fee, and Disney has not disclosed the film’s gross on the platform.

But that doesn’t detract from Mugen Train’s remarkable performance on these shores, which echoes its record-smashing run in Japan, where it became the highest-grossing film of all time. In North America, it is the third-biggest anime grosser ever, behind Pokemon: The First Movie ($85.7M) and Pokemon: The Movie 2000 ($43.7M). It is also the sixth-highest-grossing foreign language release of all time, having overtaken Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labryinth ($37M, unadjusted for inflation).

Mugen Train is based on Koyoharu Gotoge’s manga Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba and the eponymous anime series. It is directed by Haruo Sotozaki and produced by the Tokyo-based Ufotable. In North America, the film is distributed by Funimation and Aniplex of America, who will release it digitally on June 22.