Culture ‘Infinity Castle’ Tops the Box Office, Revealing Changing Tastes - “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle,” an anime film from Sony Pictures, arrives to a surprisingly strong $70 million in domestic ticket sales.

“Infinity Castle” gave Hollywood its biggest opening of the year for an animated movie, easily passing entries from Pixar and DreamWorks.Credit...Sony Pictures Entertainment

Younger audiences are sending a message to Hollywood: Our tastes in movies are changing.

Over the weekend, an anime film called “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle,” filmed in Japanese and released in North American theaters in subtitled and English-dubbed versions, was a runaway No. 1 at the box office. The movie, about demon exterminators battling inside a supernatural fortress, sold roughly $70 million in tickets in the United States and Canada from Thursday night through Sunday — about 55 percent more than analysts had predicted before its release.

“Young audiences are ready for something fresh and exciting,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers.

“Infinity Castle,” which received strong reviews, set a record for the biggest opening weekend in North America for an anime movie. The previous record-holder was “Pokémon: The First Movie — Mewtwo Strikes Back,” which collected $31 million in 1999, or about $61 million after adjusting for inflation.

“Infinity Castle” also gave Hollywood its biggest opening for any animated movie so far this year, easily surpassing DreamWorks Animation’s “Dog Man,” which took in $36 million over its first few days in theaters in January, and Pixar’s “Elio,” which bombed with a $21 million opening weekend.

The R-rated “Infinity Castle” cost an estimated $20 million to make and came from Crunchyroll, an anime streaming service and studio owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment. Overseas, where it has been in release since July, “Infinity Castle” has taken in an additional $375 million-plus, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data.

The colossal turnout for “Infinity Castle” prompted double-takes in Hollywood, which has been struggling to adapt to changing generational interests. Multiplexes in the United States and Canada had their worst summer since 1981, after adjusting for inflation and excluding the Covid pandemic years, when many theaters were closed for long periods.

The movie establishment was also caught by surprise in June, when another anime movie, “KPop Demon Hunters,” became a megahit on Netflix. Interest in that movie was so strong that Netflix, which typically eschews theatrical releases, distributed a singalong version in theaters in August.
“KPop Demon Hunters Singalong” generated roughly $20 million in opening-weekend ticket sales, an astounding sum for a movie that had been widely available on Netflix for months.

“Seeing KPop culture and anime rise among mainstream movie audiences with this magnitude is significant,” Mr. Gross said. “It’s still new but it looks very real.”

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Brooks Barnes covers all things Hollywood. He joined The Times in 2007 and previously worked at The Wall Street Journal.

 

[LightDragonman1]

Again, every time I go into a bookstore, the manga section is just filled with shelf upon shelf, whereas Western comics are stuck with just one measly shelf that has to share its section with gaming guides and art books.

Not to mention how the manga section also has plenty of people in it, whereas only a couple people check out the Western comics section maybe an hour.

 

[SITHRAK!]

And I'm pretty sure Minus One was a significantly bigger hit internationally. I remember Shin having a short arthouse theater release but Minus One was in the megaplexes for a decent stretch.

Ah fuck that’s the one I meant, not Shin, goddamnit.

Not to mention how the manga section also has plenty of people in it, whereas only a couple people check out the Western comics section maybe an hour.

Pic related will not ever be not funny to me.

 

[oh no its pipkun]

The Boys, Scalped, 100 Bullets, and I got most of the way through Chew before I gave up

comics that had enough of a great premise for a story or two and then quickly fizzled out. scalped and chew especially. 70 million is big for anime, hopefully we get more in theatre releases with decent voice casts. i know Godzilla minus 1 and shin godzilla were getting theatre plays.

And I'm pretty sure Minus One was a significantly bigger hit internationally. I remember Shin having a short arthouse theater release but Minus One was in the megaplexes for a decent stretch.

off the back of minus one, the remaster of shin godzilla got a limited release 2 week theater run this august and made 4 million.

 

[Ambidextype]

Now, the question everyone should be asking themselves is why Hollywood isn't copying whatever it is that Demon Slayer is doing to be so successful, or why they're still pushing the same ideas that have led to catastrophic failure after catastrophic failure.

It's very simple actually. Cultural marxists only know how to double down on their failures. It's all they excel at. They have no nuance, no techniques just head full of buzzwords. It's not just the entertainment industry methinks. I think a lot of investors are cultural marxists that's why far-left talking points still persist for a long time.

 

[Blewberry Nausea]

It's very simple actually. Cultural marxists only know how to double down on their failures. It's all they excel at. They have no nuance, no techniques just head full of buzzwords. It's not just the entertainment industry methinks. I think a lot of investors are cultural marxists that's why far-left talking points still persist for a long time.

Also Hollywood is a narcissistic hive of unwarranted self-importance.

 

[Blewberry Nausea]

Sorry for the double post but this is being spread around and it’s about a Demon Slayer showing where some nigger pissed on a group of dudes and got his ass beat and arrested.

He peed on some men and their child while they were watching the movie, ruining the movie for everyone and committing a crime.They even call him R.Kelly at around 48 seconds in.

1:31

 

[The Connected Nose]

Gimme my puzzle pieces, but I'm constantly annoyed by this "translation as a sub-title" garbage that gets done with anime these days, along with hearing the Japanese name for something with the English translation crammed onto the end like it's all supposed to be said at the same time no matter what. "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba" being a prime example. You can just call it "Demon Slayer", fans will understand. Also avoids the awkwardness of double sub-titles, i.e. "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Infinity Castle."

Or YouTubers (looking at you, Chris Broad) and always hearing things like "izakaya pub" or "torii gate", or "matcha green tea." FFS trust your audience to understand.

 

[Hokuriku]

Sorry for the double post but this is being spread around and it’s about a Demon Slayer showing where some nigger pissed on a group of dudes and got his ass beat and arrested.

Even the cesspool theater-going experience FAFO karma is exponentially better than what you get during a Marvel slop screening. The guy going fully ham while all the seizure inducing anime effects are flying in the background is fucking slaying me.

 

[cactus]

Even the cesspool theater-going experience FAFO karma is exponentially better than what you get during a Marvel slop screening. The guy going fully ham while all the seizure inducing anime effects are flying in the background is fucking slaying me.

Even funnier is, that was the climax of the 2nd fight of the movie lmao.

 

[oh no its pipkun]

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba" being a prime example. You can just call it "Demon Slayer", fans will understand. Also avoids the awkwardness of double sub-titles, i.e. "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Infinity Castle."

its be "demon slayer:infinity castle" they've made a few demon slayer movies

 

[The Cunting Death]

I refuse to watch it solely because I think the protagonist looks ugly.

 

[BulkForceFive]

At one point Demon Slayer volumes were outselling all Western comics, combined.

Well that's not exactly high praise considering informational pamphlets about Hemhorroids And You: A Complete Guide are flying off the shelves faster than Western comics.

This is just another version of the Box Office Argument where I'm supposed to believe that Avengers: Quipgame is a better film than Paris, Texas because more people went to see the former.

 

[regalterry]

Well that's not exactly high praise considering informational pamphlets about Hemhorroids And You: A Complete Guide are flying off the shelves faster than Western comics.

I mean, yeah, but one single manga title selling more copies than every other Western comic is apocalyptic. Once people get tired of capeshit, what use is there for the industry? Leftists killed an artistic medium that had been around for 200 years within the span of 20.

It's not even a question of quality, really. Demon Slayers is the sloppiest shonenshit of them all, but it sells better than Western comics because audiences can tell it was made by someone that wants the audience to enjoy themselves, instead of subjecting them to the miserable NTR narrative of current Spider-Man, written solely to spite and anger every fan of the character.

And Demon Slayers isn't an outliner, the whole top 20 of comic book sales is generally dominated by manga, with a few pathetic Western comic clinging on desperately.

 

[Human Waiter]

I was surprised my theatre had more showtimes for the subbed version versus the dubbed.

 

[Absurdist Laughter]

No agenda, no uppity creators. Just a story to be told to fans, with interesting characterizations and pretty good animation.

Demon Slayer wasn't my cup of tea, but I'm glad it is doing damn well. It should be a slap to Western animators.

For now. Slaps don't work on Americans when there is a looming cash cow to milk these hentai rotted coomer brains to come out of the goon cave and go to a theater.

 

[The best and greatest]

Just wish the comedy was turned down like 5 notches, the amount of screaming really gets grating fast.

Thankfully this is the direction things seem to be going anyway. Zenitsu's rees will still be an ongoing annoyance for levity but its a small price to pay.

 

[ZazietheBeast]

You can thank the Coof for the explosion of Anime in the West as well as Western entertainment taking it up the ass for DIE points. That said, this is one of the reasons why you have the WEF doing what they can to muscle into Japan so they can squash entertainment that does not line up with their NWO garbage. Hence the flooding of browns there.

 

[The best and greatest]

The most interesting thing about this article is that the movie only cost $20 mil apparently.

Havent seen the movie but im curious what the production values are like. If comparable to the series this number makes more sense since the show is actually shockingly cheap-looking at times. Pretty much anytime characters are walking along rice fields or through trees I get RWBY vibes.

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

Came to say basically the same thing. Tastes have not changed, boys/young men primarily enjoy sci fi or fantasy stories where people go on adventures to beat up the bad guy and save the day. This has been true for, I dunno, the entire recorded history of humans essentially?

If anything, tastes are forcibly regressing. Young boys still usually stumble into Sci-Fi with TNG or the like, and anyone who enjoys it and goes deeper will just stay back a few decades with Stargate, Babylon 5, or go even older and start reading Asimov and Niven. And its not like its completely devoid of politics or shit that we blame today, its that classic Sci-Fi came closer to steelmanning ideologies rather than flanderizing them. Ideological opponents were often both significantly more functional and powerful than the 'good guys', even if perceptually brutal by our standards, rather than the completely nonsensical pure clownshow evil-for-the-sake-of-evil we get today.

I’d love to see a return to 70’s auteur movie making culture, where the bean counters and meddlesome execs and focus groups are expelled and singular visions given free rein.

My understanding was that much of the gold of those time periods came from studio agreements. A director would agree to produce a couple movies that were exactly to spec as the studio wanted, and if they did a good job and made them successful, they'd get a modest "do whatever you want" budget for a passion film and the studio would agree to reasonably commit behind it.

I don't really think that's possible anymore. Most studios now hate the idea of not shoving eleventy billion dollars into making something the next blockbuster, probably because their debts push their borrowing costs so high they can't afford to aim for a middle ground. At the same time, they're convinced audiences won't go for the slower style of cinematography that era's past used - which conveniently helps massively keep budgets down. If you don't need a CGI laden action scene every five minutes, and you can instead have a two minute long thoughtfully slow shot of an environment or character doing something relatively mundane to set the tone, you spend a lot less producing the film as a whole.

I've seen plenty of claims that we can't have slow thoughtful elements in movies anymore because people are too brainrotted, but I'm not convinced, Anime gets away with this all the time. Half the reason its so cost effective to produce is because they're not afraid to have extremely simply animated shots of characters talking at each other repeating the same four frames. The other half of course is grueling work conditions and low pay, but welcome to being a factory line artist, now finish your cup ramen break we need four hundred more flats before you go home at 2am.

 

[Ghostse]

My understanding was that much of the gold of those time periods came from studio agreements. A director would agree to produce a couple movies that were exactly to spec as the studio wanted, and if they did a good job and made them successful, they'd get a modest "do whatever you want" budget for a passion film and the studio would agree to reasonably commit behind it.

The other difference is screenwriters used to own their scripts by getting a cut of the proceeds so they had an interest in making things entertaining. Now everyone is a wagie and doesn't care.