#Mugen Train Slays Its Way to #1 Film From 2020 Worldwide

The Numbers website now lists Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train as the #1 film from 2020, with a worldwide tally of US$474.6 million. The list also states that Mugen Train earned US$435 million outside of the United States and US$39.6 million within the United States. The #2 film from 2020 is China’s The Eight Hundred, which currently has a tally of US$472,575,002. 

Mugen Train is currently the first non-Hollywood or non-American film to top the yearly box office worldwide since the beginning of cinema over a century ago. It has become the third-highest grossing anime film in the United States and is the second Japanese animated film that ever ranked #1 at the U.S weekend box office. The movie is currently available in North America and was first released on April 23, 2021 by Funimation and Aniplex of America. 

Mugen Train first screened in Japan on October 16, 2020 and sold 3,424,930 tickets, earning 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. 

Mugen Train first screened in Singapore on November 7, 2020 as a fan screening, with a general release on November 12, 2020. A Japan import fan screening occurred on January 30-31, 2021. Mugen Train was also released in other countries in Southeast Asia such as Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

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.

Source: Numbers, Anime News Network