For the first time ever, an anime film has topped the U.S. box office for two weekends as Sony/Crunchyroll’s “Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle” has stayed No.1 with $17.3 million in its second weekend.
Despite a 76% drop from its record $70 million domestic opening — highest ever for an anime film — “Demon Slayer” is holding on against Universal/Monkeypaw’s “Him,” which is No. 2 with a $13.5 million opening from 3,168 theaters.
While Crunchyroll’s latest film is proving to be as frontloaded as all of the anime distributor’s offerings — two-thirds of the opening weekend tickets for “Demon Slayer” came from presales — the fanbase for this shonen franchise is so massive that “Infinity Castle” is now the highest grossing anime film ever with $104 million domestic and $555 million worldwide as well as Sony’s highest grossing film of any kind in 2025 with $269 million in Crunchyroll markets.
It is the sort of result that speaks both to the popularity of “Demon Slayer” and Sony’s cultivation of Crunchyroll as a hotspot for anime fans both on streaming and in theaters. With successful targeted digital marketing and trailers in front of Imax screenings this summer, “Infinity Castle” became a can’t-miss film for longtime fans as theaters became the only place for fans to see the latest chapter of the TV series’ current arc.
Farther down the charts, “Him” should break even for Universal against its reported $27 million net budget before marketing, but it is likely to have a short shelf life in theaters as critics have rejected the sports horror film with a 29% Rotten Tomatoes scores while audiences have given it a C- on CinemaScore.
The big bust of the weekend is another Sony release, the romantic fantasy “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” with an opening weekend outside the top 5 of just $3.5 million from 3,300 locations.
Despite sporting Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell in the lead roles and Kogonada in the director’s chair, “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” did not impress critics with its script, giving it a 37% Rotten Tomatoes score. Audiences were also tepid with a 58% RT score and a B- on CinemaScore, sealing the film’s fate as a bomb after Sony spent $45 million for it in a European Film Market deal.
Warner Bros./New Line’s “The Conjuring: Last Rites” is No. 3 with $12 million in its third weekend as it becomes the highest grossing film ever in the “Conjuring” franchise and the first to pass $400 million worldwide and $150 million domestic. As fellow New Line film “Weapons” is also set to pass $150 million domestic, Warner Bros. will have six films that have crossed that threshold in 2025.
Completing the top 5 are Lionsgate’s “The Long Walk” and Focus Features’ “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale,” both in a narrow race with $6.3 million each in their second weekend.
“The Long Walk” dropped just 46% from its $11.5 million opening as it now stands with a $22.7 million. That will make the Stephen King adaptation theatrically profitable for Lionsgate and puts it on pace for a domestic run similar to the $36 million total of the studio’s early-year release “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera.”
“Downton Abbey,” meanwhile, took a bigger drop of around 65% from its $18 million opening but has still posted a respectable $31 million 10-day total, above the $28.3 million two-weekend total of the last “Downton” movie, “A New Era,” in 2022.
More to come…
