Will Demon Slayer’s New Movie Beat Mugen Train at the Box Office?

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is gearing up to return to theaters with a brand new movie, but does it have a chance at topping Mugen Train at the worldwide box office? Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba‘s anime is now preparing for its grand finale as after the end of the Hashira Training arc in Season 4, it was announced that the anime would be continuing not with a Season 5, but with a new trilogy of feature films instead. This new trilogy is setting out to adapt the massive Infinity Castle arc from Koyoharu Gotoge’s original manga, and will bringing Tanjiro Kamado’s fight to its potential end.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle will begin with its first part hitting theaters in Japan later this July, and North America later this September, and it’s the first unique movie in the anime’s run since the release of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba The Movie – Mugen Train hit back in 2020. Is there a chance that this next movie can reach that same level of success? Not really, but it just might reach that box office level when the third and final film of the trilogy ends its run and you can add all three films together.

Demon Slayer: Mugen Train Was Built Different

We are quite literally in a much different world than we were in during the release of Mugen Train in theaters. Not only was that year in the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was also released when Demon Slayer was at its hottest. When Demon Slayer‘s TV anime first began, there was a lot of support behind it but it really wasn’t dominating conversations like how it does now. It was a slow burn getting to where it is today, and the fandom for it outright exploded after Episode 19 of its run. So by the time that first season ended, Demon Slayer was on the cusp of a tidal wave.

Mugen Train just hit at the perfect time. Rather than continue the TV anime with a second season, fans needed to go to theaters to see the next step of the story. This was notable back then because this feature film that was part of the story’s official canon rather than offer a new, unrelated story not tied to anything in particular (which started to become a trend in the late 2010s). Capitalizing on just how big Demon Slayer had become, fans were able to see the film in theaters and really connect with other fans for the first real time in this pandemic era.

Mugen Train‘s success was simply unheard of at the time, and the anime industry is still changing in the wake of that box office takeover. It was such a hit during the pandemic that it’s changed the course for other anime releases. Not more anime are likely to hit theaters with new films than ever before, and there is a much quicker turnaround and distribution for international territories as more fans are interested in watching anime films than ever. Mugen Train was such a hit (breaking all sorts of records despite being an R-Rated animated film) that it literally changed how anime movies are made and released from then on.

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Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle Won’t Hit That Height

This is all to say that Demon Slayer: Mugen Train was such a massive success that the anime literally can never hit those same heights again. It was a lightning in a bottle type of success that can’t be replicated in the same way. The anime is just not as popular as it was after that first season, and Demon Slayer itself has diluted its feature film branding in the years since with attempts to bring fans to theaters for early premieres of its second, third, and fourth seasons. A “Demon Slayer movie” just doesn’t have the same appeal it used to any more.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle has the chance to bring fans back into theaters thanks to being a brand new part of the story, but the fact it’s spread over a trilogy of features also further separates that appeal. It means that some of these releases will be more successful than the others, and fans might look at each film differently. It’s a shotgun blast of a strategy in the hopes of hitting that same mark Mugen Train did, and that’s a hard sell these days.

Demon Slayer isn’t the hot commodity it was all those years ago. While it still has the juice with fans who can’t wait to see many of these final fights in action, and will undoubtedly make a ton of money in theaters, it just won’t be as successful as Mugen Train. The closest this trilogy will get to matching that feat is when all three films have ended their run and we can add all three global totals together to see how big this really all was. That doesn’t mean that these films won’t be successful, they just won’t be as prominent as what hit before.