#Mugen Train Slashes Its Way to #1 in North America

Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train ranked #1 at the North American box office this past weekend. It is the second weekend since the highly-anticipated sequel to the Demon Slayer series was released, but the movie has earned an estimated US$34,118,776 as of Sunday. 

Mugen Train grossed US$6,412,933 during its second weekend, and earned US$21,144,800 at the U.S. box office during its opening weekend. It is the highest U.S. opening for an animated film so far in 2021, and is the second Japanese animated film that ever ranked #1 at the U.S weekend box office. The first Japanese film was Pokemon: The First Movie which first screened in 1999. 

Mugen Train is now the third-highest grossing anime film in the United States, overtaking the former #3, Dragon Ball Super: Broly, which earned US$30,712,119. Mugen Train trails behind Pokemon: The First Movie, which grossed US$85,744,662, and Pokemon 2000 – The Movie, which earned US$43,758,684. 

Funimation and Aniplex of America released Mugen Train in theaters on April 23, 2021, featuring the Japanese dub with English subtitles, as well as an English dub in North America. Tickets first went on sale on April 9 on Funimation’s website. The film has also been announced to be digitally released on Apple TV, Microsoft Store, Vudu, Google Play, PlayStation Store, and Amazon on June 22, 2021. 

Mugen Train first screened in Japan on October 16, 2020 and sold 3,424,930 tickets and earned 4,623,117,450 yen (about US$43.85 million) in Japan in its first three days. It sold 910,507 tickets and earned over 1,268,724,700 yen (about US$12.03 million) on its opening day alone, which became the record for the highest weekday opening day in Japan. Mugen Train has also surpassed Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away for the all-time highest grossing film in Japanese box-office history and as the #1 highest-grossing Japanese film of all time worldwide.

The Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- anime series first aired in 2019 with 26 episodes. A compilation movie titled Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Bonds of Siblings also screened in the same year, with Mugen Train following the anime series as a sequel movie. A second anime season for the franchise has been announced for 2021, with Haruo Sotozaki returning as director at ufotable. The manga by Koyoharu Gotoge was first serialized in 2016 in the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine. It ended with 211 chapters in 2020, with a total of 23 tankoubon volumes published. 

Note: All revenue numbers above are unadjusted for inflation.