Refresh for latest...: The international box office continues to provide welcome surprises during the pandemic era. Where movie theaters are open and people feel safe, they turn up for new or enduringly exciting product that’s on offer.
To wit: Japan’s Demon Slayer The Movie: Mugen Train has perhaps become the story of the year. A runaway success across this period, and in its 9th weekend, it is now estimated to have crossed $310M worldwide (largely from the home market, but also including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam). The movie is days away from becoming the top-grossing film of all time in Japan, overtaking Hayao Miyazaki’s 2010 Spirited Away. Think about that for a minute: It has taken 19 years to reach this level, and was done so during a pandemic.
We’ll have confirmed numbers out of Japan on Demon Slayer tomorrow, where the cume is expected to be closely approaching Spirited Away and primed to beat the all-time record.
Elsewhere, there was good news from China. While local title Bath Buddy was the leader this weekend, DreamWorks Animation/Universal’s The Croods: A New Age had a great -45% hold. The cume after three weeks is $46M, overtaking Mulan to become the 2nd biggest imported title of 2020.
Overall, Croods 2 grossed an estimated $8.4M this session oversea; lifting its offshore cume to $52.1M and global to $76.3M.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros’ Tenet is now at $303.5M internationally and $361.3M global. The studio’s The Witches has an offshore cume of $22M and Superintelligence is at $2.2M offshore.
Monster Hunter, which ran into censorship issues last weekend, was released by Sony in another handful of markets this session. It added $1.3M to the Sony cume and has now taken $4.8M before domestic’s upcoming bow. Taiwan held the No. 1 spot in its sophomore session to gross $610K for a market cume of $2.6M. Saudi Arabia also remained No. 1 in its second frame with $310K, bringing the local cume to $1M.5. Offshore markets still to come include Mexico, Australia, Brazil, Korea, Russia, Germany, UK, France, Italy and Japan through the first few months of 2021.