It’s getting harder to call it “niche.” Crunchyroll, the anime streaming service, over the weekend had its second No. 1 hit at the box office in just two months. The first time around, it was the latest entry in the “Demon Slayer” franchise, “Kimetsu No Yaiba Infinity Castle.” With a $70.6 million domestic opening weekend, there were reasons to explain away that one as a fluke, the culmination of immense fandom for a particular anime series in a quiet week for the box office.
This weekend though was “Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc,” which beat out Bruce Springsteen, Colleen Hoover, Tron, and Ethan Hawke’s masked Grabber villain and made $17.2 million in its opening weekend. It’s based on a Japanese anime series about a boy who can grow a chainsaw out of his head, and a huge swell of Gen Alpha, Gen-Z, and Millennial men over-indexed to make this one a hit domestically, just as its already found a wave of success abroad.
Though these two opening weekends represent just the third time in Crunchyroll’s history that it’s topped the box office (in August 2022, “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero” hit No. 1 with a $21.1 million opening), Crunchyroll has seen some consistent performances dating back to even before it officially became a Sony brand in 2022. According to data from Comscore, Crunchyroll titles have opened with seven different starts domestically in the Top 5 dating back to 2019, including for other “Demon Slayer” and “Dragon Ball Super” films, as well as “My Hero Academia,” “One Piece Film Red,” and “Jujutsu Kaisen 0.”
So what’s going on here? And can Crunchyroll really keep this hot streak going?
In April 2024, Sony skipped its presentation at CinemaCon, but sent Crunchyroll in its place. They made the case that Japanese anime is a $37 billion industry and that Crunchyroll releases since 2020 had made $217 million in North American box office. The idea was that theaters need a diversity of content on their screens, and the passionate fanbases of young people that drive anime are absolutely the crowd that exhibitors should be catering to. Later that year, Crunchyroll’s parent company Sony took things even more seriously by acquiring Alamo Drafthouse in what looked to some like a good way of bolstering its anime business by acquiring a company known for its nerdy and passionate clientele.
But this year’s “Demon Slayer” film alone made more than half of what Crunchyroll had made in that entire four-year span, ultimately hitting $132 million domestic and $666 million worldwide. “Chainsaw Man” followed a similar playbook to “Demon Slayer,” opening in the Asia Pacific markets first before opening here, so the hype was already strong with an additional $90.7 million international before it ever hit the states. Reviews were strong too. IndieWire called “Chainsaw Man” both sad and sweet while also noting it’s a gorgeously animated anime bloodfest. You’re not getting all that from a Springsteen biopic.
Generally though, you see some crossover, mainstream audience appeal when you have surprise hits like this, and that’s not necessarily happening here. “Chainsaw Man” opened on over 3,000 screens but is still an R-rated anime that is finding its core audience. And many of those folks are driving its box office through premium screens, as it made a solid 19 percent of its business, or $3.3 million, from IMAX showings.
While Crunchyroll was already doing fine before it was acquired by Sony, pairing it with Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group these past few years has given these films a bit more worldwide marketing and distribution reach to make those hits more consistent. It’s probably the reason why Sony would be better equipped to make the most out of these anime releases than others.
Clearly, there’s a market here, and it’s already grown enough that Crunchyroll just made a deal to put anime on Delta flights. But, for most of us, your guess at figuring out which anime movie will pop next is as good as ours.