Key Points
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle earned the No. 1 spot at the domestic box office this weekend and set a record.
Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell’s colorful romance, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, started with a $3.5 million domestic premiere misfire.
Up next: Paul Thomas Anderson’s wacky crime thriller One Battle After Another and the second installment in the new saga of the slasher franchise, The Strangers: Chapter 2.
If there was a big, bold, beautiful journey at the box office this week, it didn’t star Margot Robbie or Colin Farrell.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle slashed its competition to ribbons at the domestic box office this week, earning $17.3 million in its second week of release in U.S. theaters. This marks the violent anime epic’s ninth week since its home country premiere in Japan, but only second after rolling out from Asian markets to the rest of the world.
With a current global total of $665 million after raking in another $61.8 million this weekend, Infinity Castle has become the highest grossing anime film in global box office history, easily surpassing films like Spirited Away, Your Name, and the 2020 installment in the long-running, multimedia Demon Slayer franchise, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train.
The weekend’s box office estimates come as a boon to Sony, which released Infinity Castle via its anime distribution banner Crunchyroll, but in the same weekend, the studio suffered a disappointing premiere of a highly prized project.
Universal
Tyriq Withers in ‘Him’
Robbie and Farrell’s swooning, vividly-colored romance A Big Bold Beautiful Journey started off on the wrong foot, grossing just $3.5 million in its premiere. The film, directed by Columbus helmer Kogonada, was budgeted at an estimated $45 million — before marketing costs — and its first go at the domestic box office earned it the sixth spot on the weekend’s top 10. The film only took in an additional $5.5 million from over 40 global markets.
Beating it were Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale and The Long Walk, tying for fourth place with $6.3 million in their second weeks of release; The Conjuring: Last Rites, which added $12.9 million to reach a franchise-high of $151 million since its Sept. 5 release; and finally Him, Universal’s latest offering from Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions.
Starring I Know What You Did Last Summer breakout Tyriq Withers, Marlon Wayans, and Julia Fox, the rare mashup of football and horror earned the No. 2 spot with a $13.5 million domestic haul. While that number looks good given the film’s estimated budget of $27 million, marketing costs may invisibly balloon that number as high as $50 or even $60 million. Concerningly, Him only added a minuscule $362,000 at the global box office, despite being released in over 20 additional territories.
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As was the case in the previous few weeks, the rest of the domestic box office leaderboard is packed with oddities. In the seventh spot with a $2.7 million opening take is The Senior, the biopic of Mike Flynt, a 59-year-old man who became a college football linebacker, that stars Michael Chiklis, Mary Stuart Masterson, and James Badge Dale. The film was released to relatively little publicity by Angel Studios, the insurgent independent production house behind surprise, Christian box office hits like Sound of Freedom and The Chosen.
The 30th anniversary release of Toy Story took the No. 8 spot with a $1.4 million gross, and Sight & Sound’s (the Christian releasing company, not the British film magazine) special one-week theatrical release of NOAH!, a stage retelling of the biblical Noah and the ark story, fell in at No. 9 with $1.3 million.
Next week sees the release of two films with the potential to beat Demon Slayer.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s highly anticipated One Battle After Another premieres four years after his widely lauded coming-of-age throwback Licorice Pizza. The wacky political thriller boasts the combined star power of Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Benicio del Toro, and Sean Penn.
The Strangers: Chapter 2 also lands next Friday. Riverdale breakout Madelaine Petsch anchors the home-invasion horror franchise’s new trilogy.
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