‘Kpop Demon Hunters’ Gets Netflix’s First No. 1 Win at the BO!!

Netflix/Sony Pictures Animation’s Kpop Demon Hunters have risen and they’re snatching No. 1 away from New Line/Warner Bros’ Zach Cregger horror movie Weapons, with an estimated $18M two-day opening. This is according to industry sources this morning as Netflix isn’t reporting. The Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans directed anime movie did an estimated $9.6M yesterday and is expected to do $8.4M today, -13%. If we get better guidance, we’ll update our numbers, but this is how it’s looking as of this morning.

Admissions for Kpop‘s Saturday and Sunday per EntTelligence is 1.5 million alone off a standard ticket price of $13.63. Premium tickets went for $16.31 repping 18% of the weekend’s admissions, while general attendees represented 82%.

Warner Bros is reporting that Weapons third weekend stands at $15.6M, -36% with a running total of $115.8M. Kpop beat Weapons yesterday, the latter earning $6.4M.

Netflix has only booked Kpop Demon Hunters for a two-day play. At a time when exhibitors are calling for windows on theatrical releases, they’ve caved during one of the driest weekends at the summer box office by making an exception for Kpop Demon Hunters. Comscore is calling the weekend sans Kpop at $60M. That would rank as the lowest grossing weekend of summer to date. It’s still bound to be the lowest weekend of summer 2025 so far even if you include Kpop, but it’s not as bad, around $78M. The previous lowest weekend this summer was the second weekend of May with $85.5M.

AMC hasn’t caved to playing Kpop, but they will play Netflix’s Greta Gerwig’s Narnia. When the time comes, will Netflix report grosses on behalf of the filmmaker who delivered Warner Bros’ their highest grossing movie ever? It’s strange to hide the box office on a No. 1 ranking film when the streamer is tooting its own horn weekly about the viewership of its shows using its own metric (one which Disney+ has adopted in its own streaming viewership reporting).

The machine driving awareness and engagement on social per RelishMix on Kpop Demon Hunters is fueled by YouTube videos over the last two months with a social media reach across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, and YouTube of 10.5 billion. That includes songs and trailers.

Says RelishMix, “Convo on Kpop Demon Hunters run positive, as a stadium chant — loud, euphoric, and bordering on religious devotion. Fans swoon over the soundtrack, calling it ‘better than BTS’ and joking that they’ve been ‘hypnotized’ into looping the songs all day, while others gush that this ‘could debut as an actual boy group track.’ Fans admit that they came expecting a disposable Netflix filler and left ‘addicted’ to the point of nonstop replays. Comments liken the movie’s animation to Spider-Verse and even Big Hero 6, calling Jinu the new gold standard for animated K-pop idols. The through-line is clear: people can’t believe this much polish and catchiness came from a demon-slaying parody premise, and they love that the songs double as both bops and sly metaphors for soul consumption.”

Does Sony have any regrets about handing off Kpop Demon Hunters to Netflix? The movie is bound to become the streamer’s most watched movie, toppling the near 231M global views of Dwayne Johnson-Chris Evans-Gal Gadot’s Red Notice. Sony has no regrets whatsoever as it was always part of the plan in the Culver City lot’s $3 billion Netflix deal. Part of that sum, around $600M, was to be committed to direct platform productions from Sony. The non-IP Kpop went to Netflix in the very first week of the deal. Netflix paid $100M to make Kpop plus $25M to Sony. That price will go up is the streamer buys out subsequent windows from the Culver City lot. All the animated work on the movie was done by Sony ImageWorks, so even more of a margin for Sony. Sony Pictures Animation is attached to all Kpop sequels and spinoffs. The movie, I’m told, is a profitable play for Sony.

How the indie openers went down this weekend: Focus Features Honey Don’t! ($3M opening), Bleecker Street’s David Mckenzie directed Relay ($1.9M ), A24’s Nhe Zha II ($1.5M for the Michelle Yeoh English lingo version; overall cume for Mandarian and English domestic is $22.4M), Vertical/AGC Studios’ Eden from Ron Howard ($1M) and NEON’s Splitsville from Michael Angelo Covino ($105,5K at 5 locations in what is the weekend’s best theater average at $21K, muy bien).

Mubi’s Sundance pick-up Lurker from Beef and The Bear episodic director Alex Russell did $64,4K for the weekend at four LA and NYC locations, for a $16K theater average. The movie stars Théodore Pellerin as Melrose Ave shop clothing shop employee who works his way into the inner circle of a hot burgeoning pop star played by Saltburn‘s Archie Madekwe, creating a toxic relationship. The pic is 93% certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.