As slow as the box office has been this month, it could have been so much worse had it not been for an unprecedented savior: anime.
Crunchyroll and its parent studio, Sony Pictures, have become a load-bearing pillar for the autumn theatrical marketplace thanks to its pair of anime franchise releases, “Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle” and “Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc.”
Combined, those films have grossed $168 million domestically, accounting for roughly one-sixth of the approximately $1 billion in overall grosses over the past two months. The only larger contributor this autumn has been Warner Bros./New Line’s “The Conjuring: Last Rites” with $177 million.
“Could you imagine how abysmal the post-summer box office would have been without Crunchyroll?” said Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “I think it is safe to say that anime isn’t alternative content anymore. It is a growing part of a changing theatrical market.”
With “Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle” smashing the record for the highest-grossing anime film of all time both in the U.S. and abroad — it has passed “Superman” and the “How to Train Your Dragon” remake with $667 million worldwide — Crunchyroll has positioned Sony to take advantage of changing audience tastes, particularly in Asia, where Sony Pictures Releasing handles distribution on all of Crunchyroll’s theatrical acquisitions outside of Japan.
And while “Chainsaw Man” isn’t making nearly as much as “Demon Slayer,” its $17.2 million No. 1 opening in the pre-Halloween frame is a noted improvement over past Crunchyroll releases. Prior to this R-rated action fantasy, the only Crunchyroll releases to gross more than $15 million in North America were films from “Demon Slayer” and the elder statesman of anime series, “Dragon Ball,” with the 2022 film “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero” grossing $32.1 million in 2022.
So how has anime become such a boon for theaters? The keys have been a change in the types of films on offer, as well as Sony adopting a strategy that exhibitors have wanted all the studios to take for some time now.
Windowing matters
The biggest factor behind the unprecedented success of “Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle” is, of course, its immense global fanbase rivaled by only a select few anime series. But another key factor was that fans were aware of the film’s theatrical exclusivity.
Windowing is a continued hot button topic for the movie theater industry, but it is rare that the time gap between theatrical release and streaming release becomes a part of the public discussion surrounding a film. When Disney started implementing a hard 100-day theatrical window for its films along with a policy to delay any public announcement of their films’ release on Disney+ for as long as possible, it was done with no fanfare.
But leading up to the release of “Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle,” Crunchyroll’s EVP of Global Commerce Mitchel Berger told Popverse that the film would get a full theatrical exclusive window and would not be released on streaming — where anime is wildly popular and delivering billions in streaming revenue — until 2026.
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“Go see it in the theater because the theater is the only place you’re going to be able to see this film in 2025,” he said.
This was a rare instance of an executive going public with their studio’s windowing strategy, but it is not exclusive to “Demon Slayer.” Another Crunchyroll theatrical release, “Spy x Family Code: White” grossed a modest $8.1 million domestically from its release in April 2024 and was released on streaming in September of that year.
And beyond Crunchyroll, Sony has extended an olive branch to theaters when it comes to windowing, with chairman Tom Rothman promising at CinemaCon that his studio would “work with” theaters on windows and ticket pricing. Indeed, Sony’s licensing deal with Netflix continues to prove fruitful for both partners, but Sony releases like “28 Years Later” and “Karate Kid Legends” didn’t show up on the streamer until 90 days after they hit theaters.
No “recap films”
So when hardcore fans of “Demon Slayer” or “Chainsaw Man” know they will have to wait at least three months to see these films at home if they don’t see it in theaters, the FOMO factor is very much in play…as long as what those fans would be afraid of missing out on is something fresh.
The other big key to the success of these two Crunchyroll releases is that they are not “recap films,” feature-length summaries of recent story arcs in anime series. Such films can help grow a series’ fanbase by helping curious newcomers get caught up quick, and they’re a common practice with popular anime. The downside is there’s a far lower ceiling to their box office potential. The popular supernatural action series “Jujutsu Kaisen” will be on IMAX screens in December for a recap film called “Execution,” but that is expected to take a backseat to another Gen Z draw in the form of Universal/Blumhouse’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.”
Take the February 2024 “Demon Slayer” film “To the Hashira Training,” which consisted of a recap of the third season of “Demon Slayer” before showing that season’s finale in its entirety, followed by the first episode of season 4, which was released on Crunchyroll in June. That film grossed $17.6 million domestically, little more than half of the $33 million than “Infinity Castle” made on its opening day alone.
Another type of anime film to look out for ones based on popular TV shows but with their own original stories. “Spy x Family Code: White,” despite the show’s popularity, didn’t make much of a dent in the box office with $8.1 million domestic because it was a side story that stood separate from the core source material, so wasn’t deemed necessary viewing by fans.
“Infinity Castle” and “Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc” were both completely new films advancing the story fans had seen on TV, and the box office numbers rose accordingly. The concept of continuing the plot of the source material — typically manga — in film vs. television is a growing trend in anime, with other examples being volleyball-themed “Haikyu!!” and science-fiction samurai adventure “Gintama.”
Perhaps the closest Western equivalent to this trend is Disney’s upcoming “Star Wars” film “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” a direct continuation of the three-season Disney+ series “The Mandalorian.” During the 2023 strikes, Lucasfilm reevaluated its plans for a fourth season of the show, and its arc was rewritten into a film that will be released next Memorial Day weekend.
Movie theater owners getting up to speed with franchise anime will have to keep an eye out for whether these theatrical releases are recap films or original stories vs. movies based on the source material and adjust their expectations accordingly.
Given that anime films perform best on weekends where there’s no direct tentpole competition, Crunchyroll’s 2026 release slate likely won’t be fully locked in until the rest of Hollywood settles their slates and gives Sony an idea of the best weekends still on the calendar.
But one film that will be on the slate is “That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Tales of the Azure Sea,” which is set to hit Japanese theaters in February. The film continues the story of an ongoing three-season anime series about a murdered salaryman who is reincarnated as a shapeshifting slime in a fantasy world.
Like a previous “Slime” film released in 2022 called “Scarlet Bond,” “Tales of the Azure Sea” is expected to have an original story written specifically for the film rather than continuing the TV series’ adaptation of the 2010s light novel series that launched the franchise. That means it may not be as essential to the future of the series’ plot as “Infinity Castle” was to “Demon Slayer,” and may not have as high a ceiling. “Scarlet Bond” took in $11.6 million globally.
But “Slime” isn’t going to be the last anime film to appear at the box office in 2026, and with more of them taking the “Infinity Castle” route of incorporating the core story to create a must-see event, it’s only a matter of time before Sony and Crunchyroll have another breakout weekend on their hands.
