Demon Slayer’s Box Office Success Is Going to Be Trouble for Its Future

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle has been doing incredibly well at the box office since its release earlier this Summer, and it might be impossible for the follow up films to match that level of success. Demon Slayer ended the fourth season of the anime with the announcement that the franchise would not be continuing with a new season, but instead would be coming to theaters with a brand new feature film trilogy taking on the massive Infinity Castle arc from Koyoharu Gotoge’s original manga. For all intents and purposes, it does seem like the anime is going to end this way.

That means there’s going to be more pressure on Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle in the future. It’s wild in retrospect to see this first film success given that it’s the start to a whole new trilogy, and the franchise is somehow going to need to keep up that momentum for what could likely be a very long wait before each film actually releases. So Demon Slayer‘s success at the worldwide box office just might be a double edged sword as the other films are going to need to reach this level too. That might be just too big of a demand.

Is Demon Slayer Almost Too Successful?

With the runaway success of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castlethere’s already a stumbling block in terms of reaching even more fans. Because it continues to do so well domestically and abroad, there’s not any incentive for the film to reach home media release or even a streaming launch just yet. Mitchel Berger, Executive Vice President, Global Commerce, even revealed that the film won’t be streaming until 2026 at the earliest, and that’s going to be a bummer for those fans wanting to see it but can’t go to theaters.

Demon Slayer’s success in theaters might not only push its home media and streaming release further back, but it can also mean that there won’t be any rush to release the future films in the Infinity Castle trilogy. It’s clear that the staff behind the films are going to be working on the rest of the trilogy with as much care as the first film to give the franchise the best chance at success, but it’s also not like the next two films are going to release on an annual basis either. It’s going to be a much longer wait.

Those behind the scenes at Crunchyroll have already stated that the future Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle films are going to be in production for quite a while. That all makes further sense when you also realize that its home media release likely won’t hit until next year. For example, if the second film was going to hit in 2026, this first film would have a much faster run through theaters and to homes so that the promotional train for the second film can begin in its own right.

Demon Slayer Has a High Bar to Cross for the Future

Now that this first Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle has done so well, it’s also raised the bar for the rest of the franchise. There are a lot of potential factors going into the success of this first film. Not only is it the first brand new release for the anime since Mugen Train, but it’s also the next crucial part of that story. Those who fell in love with the anime absolutely needed to go to theaters in order to pick up from the TV anime’s cliffhanger, and anticipation was at all time high.

It’s the kind of timing that really only works a single time, and that could be ruined with the follow up films. If the second film releases sometime in 2027, there’s a chance that this current fervor for the sequel will die down. That’s even truer for the third film if it also releases in a two year gap and hits theaters in 2029. Though that final film does have some better chance at being a hit than the second film if it also gets to be the grand finale of the anime overall.

Demon Slayer is truly an anime of its time, and there’s going to be an ultimate question as to whether or not it will end the 2020s in its current heights when the trilogy comes to an end. These next films are going to need to be as successful as this first film in order to feel like the trilogy itself is a success. If there’s any sign of downturn for any reason, then this delicate balancing act of releasing each film two years apart is going to fall apart. Each of these films needs to be an undoubted hit, and this one might have just started out the trilogy on too high of pillar to overcome.

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