I drive a Kia and I do love me some Kogi barbecue, especially when the lines at their ever-popular food truck isn’t snaking around the block. That’s not often, mind you. So I’m clearly partial to Korean culture.
But apparently my fervor pales in comparison to those who have been watching movies lately. Judging by the few blips of good news that we’re seeing in box office news, there’s ample evidence that if you’ve got something to offer in the world of Demon Hunters, you’re guaranteed outstanding results.
Naturally, it took a global website called THE NEWS to best put this past weekend’s results into perspective:
Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, the first movie of three planned films, was released on July 18, 2025, in Japan, and on September 12, 2025, worldwide. The movie’s opening weekend in the United States and Canada was a record-breaker for an anime film, grossing an estimated $70 million. According to a Crunchyroll news report, a representative from Sony Pictures Entertainment said the film “marked the highest-grossing debut for an anime film in the United States.”
$70 million in the middle of September for any movie, what with the collective competiton of back-to-school, football weekends and the waning days of summer, is a huge win. Let alone what some uninformed adults might otherwise dismiss as a crude cartoon.
But for an addicted core audience of Gens Z and A–gradually being seen as the saving grace of theatre owners–it was merely a reinforcement of what we had just seen a few weeks before. POLYGON’s Aimee Hart shared that news in an August 25th peice:
Aug. 22 to 24 was, without a doubt, the weekend of KPop Demon Hunters. Worldwide, the animated singing sensation was everywhere, from Vue Cinemas in the UK to Regal and Cinemark Theatres, along with Alamo Drafthouse, in the United States. And according to the Hollywood Reporter, it scored big, raking in $18 to $20 million from 1,700 North American theaters…(N)o matter how you slice it, this was Netflix’s first major box office win.
For Netflix, this was merely an exclamation point on a massively successful summer for this property, as NORTHEASTERN GLOBAL NEWS’ Cody Mello-Klein conceded:
Netflix released the animated fantasy action musical in June and it quickly — and unexpectedly — became a bonafide, almost unavoidable global phenomenon. The movie centers on a fictional K-pop group, Huntrix, as they perform for their adoring fans and, of course, fight demons.
By every metric, it’s been a huge hit. The movie has remained steadfast in Netflix’s own viewership ratings, with 949 million minutes watched in July alone, as kids and parents have reported re-watching the movie upwards of a dozen times. Its songs have charted on the Billboard Top 10 for weeks.
And yes, you’d be right that KPop Demon Hunters is indeed from the same world as Infinity Castle. So it’s been a darn good month for Sony–especially its quietly impactful little streamer Crunchyroll, which is home base for the series that spawned all of this. So how in heck did something with this sort of potential get farmed out to a slightly bigger streamer–one that thanks to the SQUID GAMES franchise and other content that have worked their way to the tops of their publicly available weekly ranking time and again knows better than anyone of the upside of having a Korean pedigree?
According to a detailed post-mortem authored by K-POP SESSED, apparently the epitome of caution being taken by a group of short-sighted executives in control at a much less bullish time:
In 2021, Sony signed a major output deal with Netflix. Under this agreement, Netflix obtained distribution rights for selected Sony Pictures Animation films, paying upfront for both production costs and a capped premium. For K-Pop Demon Hunters, Netflix reimbursed Sony’s estimated $100 million budget plus an additional premium of up to $20 million. This meant Sony likely earned between $115–125 million before the film ever launched on Netflix.
At the time the decision was made, studios were facing enormous uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic had reshaped theatrical attendance, with families hesitant to return to theaters. Animated films that once grossed hundreds of millions were underperforming. Sony had no guarantee that K-Pop Demon Hunters would succeed in a crowded theatrical marketplace dominated by Disney and Pixar titles. By selling the film to Netflix, Sony secured guaranteed revenue, protected itself from potential box office losses, and aligned with broader trends of shifting high-risk projects to streaming.
So kudos to Sony for at least having the savvy to find a window of opportunity to get INFINITY CASTLE out there while the irons are still hot. As uber fan Janelle Germain of THE AMERICAN RIVER CURRENT notes, they have the benefit of a pretty compelling storyline to please the genre’s zealots–not to mention something that she’s subtly suggesting is worth a Crunchyroll subscription:
This new installation of the series is titled “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba The Movie: Infinity Castle,” as it follows the series’s main characters into an “Infinity Castle” for their biggest battle yet. As this movie serves as a continuation to the cliffhanger at the end of the last season, audiences cannot go into this movie blind…there are just as many heartfelt scenes as there were fighting scenes. A predominant chunk of the movie consists of elaborate flashback scenes that portrays the backstories of both the demon slayers and the demons they fight. These flashbacks provide the affected characters with their reasonings and purpose for ending up where they are in the fight, with the overcoming of these visions ending in the character’s death or leading to the character evolving to a new version of themselves.
Yes, Sony’s are reaping the immediate benefits, and it’s highly likely that when the movie eventually hits Crunchyroll it will result in a decent number of sign-ups. But it could have been a lot more. Mello-Klein was astute enough to reach out to internal sources for confirmation of exactly how robust this market is:
Part of it has to do with “KPop Demon Hunters” itself and part of it has to do with the global reach of Korean culture, specifically K-pop, that exists today, says Viviane Kim, an assistant teaching professor of design at Northeastern University.
“KPop Demon Hunters” is the latest beneficiary of the massive global audience that exists around K-pop and the wave of Korean culture that has hit the West, otherwise known as Hallyu. The South Korean government estimated that global Hallyu fans numbered more than 200 million in 2024. In other words, Korean culture is global culture.
But leave it to a colleague who, like me, has a history in Oswego, New York to throw a little cold water on this phenomenon:
Steve Granelli, a teaching professor of communication studies at Northeastern, says the movie’s theatrical success is a promising sign for theaters in the age of streaming. However, he warns it’s not a guaranteed strategy. There’s a level of energy and effort that people are going to put into consumption of a particular type of art or experience,” Granelli explains. “That’s rare. I don’t see this as a verifiable kind of model moving forward for all releases. I see this as an option, but it’s a very narrow target to try to hit to be able to pull this off.”
Killjoy. At least Sony’s finding new ways to connect with young folks with disposable income who will gladly pay Alamo Drafthouse’s inflated imported beer prices, let alone Crunchyroll’s monthly fee. And with any luck they’ll be buying Sony TVs and audio equipment to stream it all on.
So take that, Netflix. There’s room for more than one winner in this case.
Until next time…