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Demon Slayer Film Opens at #1 in New Zealand

The Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train anime film ranked #1 at the New Zealand box office in its opening weekend, and has earned the equivalent of US$250,151 as of February 28. The film opened in New Zealand on February 25.

As of Monday, the film has sold a cumulative total of 27.68 million tickets for 38.1 billion yen (about US$357.1 million) in Japan. It ranked #2 for the weekend by selling about 100,000 tickets for 156 million yen (about US$1.462 million).

After 12 consecutive weeks at #1 in the box office in Japan, Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train dropped to #2 during the January 9-10 weekend, its 13th weekend. The film ranked at #1 again in its 14th and 15th weekend, fell back down to #2 in its 16th weekend, and stayed at #2 in its 17th weekend. The film ranked at #3 in its 18th and 19th weekends.

The film has surpassed Hayao Miyazaki's 2002 Spirited Away, its last rival for all-time highest earnings in Japanese box office history. (Spirited Away earned 30.8 billion yen in its original run, but has since earned a total of 31.68 billion yen after last summer's revival screenings.) The film has also surpassed Spirited Away as the #1 highest-earning Japanese film of all time worldwide.

Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train began screening in Japan on October 16. The film had the highest opening weekend globally for the October 16-18 weekend. The film sold 3,424,930 tickets and earned 4,623,117,450 yen (about US$43.85 million) in Japan in its first three days. The film sold 910,507 tickets and earned over 1,268,724,700 yen (about US$12.03 million) on its opening day alone, making it the highest weekday opening day in Japan ever.

The main staff members of the previous television anime returned for the sequel film. TOHO and Aniplex are handling the film's distribution in Japan. Funimation and Aniplex of America will screen the film in theaters in North America in early 2021.

Source: The Numbers