Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle had quite the robust Saturday yesterday north of $21M+ which will get the Crunchyroll movie to a massive $70M opening. That’s the sixth biggest opening of September, in addition to the best ever for an anime movie, best ever for Crunchyroll, and best for Sony over the last two years.

EntTelligence says that 4.5 million people went to see Infinity Castle, shelling out an average ticket price of $14.56 for general and $17.91 for PLF.

While some sources were calling Infinity Castle at these high echelon numbers, the ongoing concern was that the anime-narrow audience would reach its limit in attendance this weekend. Read, per Screen Engine/Comscore’s PostTrak, there was very little walk-up business at 33% with 67% of the audience buying tickets in advance (within the last week or more) as of EOD Friday. Sources tell me that the audience did expand beyond the core yesterday, evident in great word of mouth and a 98% audience score. Not to mention, the movie didn’t just play in NYC and LA core B.O. epicenters but the outlier markets as well. Regal Irvine in the OC still the top grossing venue in the country with $167K.

Get this: 55% of the audience per EntTelligence went to see a subtitled version of Infinity Castle, while 33% bought tickets to dubbed showtimes. Lots of evening playtime for this per EntTelligence with 53% of Saturday’s moviegoers watching the Crunchyroll title after 5PM.

This is the fourth Demon Slayer movie to be released in U.S. theaters, the last one in 2021 before Sony Pictures acquired Crunchyroll. Hence, it’s the first Demon Slayer released under the Sony label. Even though this is a Crunchyroll title, and Sony owns Crunchyroll, I understand the Culver City lot gets a 20% distribution fee.

Top six openings for September:

Focus Features’ Downton Abbey: Grand Finale after looking like it would hit $20M, eased back greatly with what’s now a $18.1M opening after a $5.3M Saturday, -40% from Friday/previews’ $8.8M in 3rd place. That’s the second best opening in the franchise after 2019’s $31M. AMC Lincon Square in NYC is still the threequel’s top gross at $47K. The pic cost a net of $50M before P&A. Top ten markets were NY, LA, Dallas, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, DC, Chicago, Atlanta and Phoenix.

Lionsgate’s feature take of Stephen King’s The Long Walk from director Francis Lawrence is coming in at $11.5M after a $4M Saturday, just -16% off from Friday/previews of $4.76M. The pom pom wave here for the movie is that it got made and was released, Lawrence getting it over the finished line. The novel was hard for several to crack with several directors making a go prior to Lawrence including George Romero, Frank Darabont, André Øvredal and James Vanderbilt. It was low budget at net $20M before P&A, and the opening here, as we told you yesterday, is just under the $14M made respectively by other recent King big screen takes, Doctor Sleep and this year’s The Monkey. A margin-able play. However, it unfortunately ranks as Lawrence’s lowest wide opening at the box office after 2011’s Water for Elephants and 2018’s Red Sparrow, both of which debuted to $16.8M.

Other things going on in a robust $147M September weekend include

–Mubi’s Cannes title History of Sound starring Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal opening in four NYC and LA locations to $85,7K or $21,4K per theater.

Chart is updating with Sunday numbers in bold.

via Deadline