Reze Arc Tears Through The Competition

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Credit: Crunchyroll

Anime has taken a prominent role in the modern box office. It was just a little over a month ago that Haruo Sotozaki’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle utterly dominated in its opening, putting up record-setting numbers, and now, the animation medium has another big title up on a pedestal. This past weekend was loaded up with a diverse slate of new 2025 releases, including Josh Boone’s Regretting You (based on the novel by Coleen Hoover) and Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, but neither ended up proving to be true competition for the arrival of Tatsuya Yoshihara’s Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc.

Things didn’t go exactly as expected over the last three days at the box office, resulting in a very interesting Top 10 for the weekend. Check out the chart below and join me after for analysis.

Credit: Crunchyroll

Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc Is The Latest Anime Title To Rule The Box Office

To be clear upfront: the ticket sales for Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc don’t really compare to what Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle did in September. The latter, following up the strong debut of Demon Slayer: Mugen Train in April 2021 and Haruo Sotozaki’s Demon Slayer: To the Hashira Training in 2024, had what will be remembered as one of the biggest opening weekends of 2025, as it not only set a record as a domestic anime release, but it’s $70.6 million earned is still in the Top 10 of three-day successes dating back to the beginning of January (Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning made just $64 million when it arrived in late May).

That being said, the results are still noteworthy.

According to The Numbers, the Chainsaw Man feature was able to easily win the box office this weekend, earning $17.3 million while playing in a little over 3,000 theaters in the United States and Canada. It’s not a blow-back-your-hair result (its just the 32nd biggest debut of 2025), but it is another statement made about the popularity of anime on the big screen.

Credit: Crunchyroll

It’s a cherry on top to what Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc has already been able to do worldwide, as the film first had its debut in Japan last month, and it has successfully been building an impressive worldwide box office total. Adding in the $17.3 million that it has now made domestically, the film has officially joined 2025’s nine-figure club, as it has globally earned $108 million.

Unfortunately, history suggests that in terms of money coming from the United States and Canada, the box office numbers are all downhill from here. In the last few years, there has been a notable pattern of anime titles being extremely frontloaded: which is to say that the biggest fans show up for opening weekend, but the movies aren’t able to generate the kind of word of mouth and buzz that invites repeat success. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle had crazy debut numbers, but ticket sales fell a devastating 75 percent seven days later.

There is no evidence that suggests that Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc will be the title that breaks that pattern, even with a relatively light weekend of new releases coming up… but it will be something to pay attention to next Sunday.

Black Phone 2 Moves To Second Place With A Modest Weekend-To-Weekend Drop

Speaking of weekend-to-weekend drops, it can be said that the last three days offered some good news for Scott Derrickson’s Black Phone 2. The growing popularity of anime domestically prevented the new horror movie from successfully repeating at the top of box office following its strong premiere, which obviously would have been a nice feather in its cap, but the folks at Universal Pictures can be very happy about how the title held on to second place.

Black Phone 2 added $13 million to its domestic total over the last three days, which brings its gross in the region to date up to $49.1 million. That total is a 52 percent change from the $27.3 million the film made last week, which suggests that audiences are liking what they saw and are telling their friends and/or family about it. Obviously it also helps that we are currently in the final weeks of Halloween season, and opportunities for scares from major studio releases are weirdly scarce right now (despite 2025 having been huge for the horror genre).

It could probably go without saying that next weekend will be an interesting box office environment for Black Phone 2. Halloween is on Friday, so will that result in a bump in ticket sales… or perhaps will be people be too busy trick or treating/attending costume parties?

Regretting You And Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere Settle For Places In The Top 5

Overall this past weekend can be held up as an example of the diverse storytelling that filmmaking is capable of, as the slate of titles arriving in wide release couldn’t have been more different… but as you can see from the Top 10, some got more attention from audiences than others. While anime and horror got the bulk of the love from movie-goers, the aforementioned Regretting You and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere had to settle for slots in the lower half of the Top 5.

Featuring a talented cast including Allison Williams, Mckenna Grace, Dave Franco and Mason Thames, Regretting You made $12.9 million in the last three days, meaning that it was just barely beat by Black Phone 2 for the silver medal in the Top 10. The highest hopes for the film was that it would be able to match the success of director Josh Boone’s previous hit romantic drama (2014’s The Fault In Our Stars, which made $300 million worldwide), but it doesn’t appear that’s a future on the table for the new feature.

As for Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, it would appear that the incredible, multidecade-long popularity of Bruce Springsteen was not able to boost a biopic into being a runaway box office success. The film has been on the receiving end of a mixed reaction from critics, with write-ups praising the lead performance from Jeremy Allen White but highlighting flaws in the narrative. If it had gotten more glowing reviews, it perhaps could have done better than just $9.1 million in its first three days on the big screen.

How will the status of the current Top 10 get shaken up with Halloween on Friday and the expansion of Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia into wide release? Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday for my latest box office column to find out.