‘Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle’ breaks five records at Japan box office

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle has broken a string of box office records in Japan and taken nearly $50m over the holiday weekend.

The highly-anticipated anime feature was released on Friday (July 18) and earned $11.1m (¥1.64bn) from 1.15 million admissions – Japan’s biggest ever opening day takings

On Sunday (July 20), the film earned $13.8m (¥2.038b), marking the highest single-day gross in Japanese history.

It also set a local record for the biggest three-day weekend, earning $37.3m (¥5.52bn) from 3.84 million admissions from July 18-20.

All these records were previously held by the previous original feature in the franchise, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train, which earned $31.2m (¥4.62b) on its opening weekend of October 16-18, 2020. That film went on to become Japan’s highest-grossing film of all time, taking $507m worldwide.

It was a public holiday in Japan yesterday – Marine Day – and boosted box office for Infinity Castle to $49.4m (¥7.31b) from 5.16 million admissions across the four days, marking a further record.

Infinity Castle set a further opening record for Imax in Japan, with an estimated $3m from 59 Imax screens, and $3.5m including the Marine Day holiday (July 21) – a screen average of $48,000.

The figures were released by Toho, which distributes the film with Sony-owned Aniplex.

Infinity Castle is the latest in the popular animated film and TV franchise based on the manga by Koyoharu Gotoge and is the first of a planned trilogy of films wrapping up the story.

Directed by Haruo Sotozaki, it follows the ongoing adventures of Tanjiro Kamado, a young man dedicated to hunting down monsters as part of the Demon Slayer Corps after his younger sister was turned into one.

The 155-minute feature opened on 443 screens, 40 more than Mugen Train’s 403 screens in 2020.

After four days, Infinity Castle is already Japan’s second highest-grossing film of the year to date, behind Detective Conan: One-eyed Flashback, which has earned $97.9m (¥14.47bn) since opening on April 18.

Over the three-day weekend, the film that ranked second was Aniplex’s Kokuho, which added $3.45m for a cume of $44.9m. Directed by Lee Sang-il, the three-hour epic about a family of kabuki performers premiered at Cannes and is Japan’s highest-grossing live-action domestic film of 2025 to date.

US tentpole Superman came third with $961,000 – a steep drop on its second weekend of release – for a cume of $5.1m.

• Nikkatsu boards Eiji Uchida drama ‘Night Flower’ starring Keiko Kitagawa