Demon Slayer: Mugen Train box office record. For a variety of reasons, Demon Slayer: Mugen Train became the highest-grossing anime movie of all time, with its box office returns being far above what anime movies are usually expected to make. Red’s performance at the box office has been met with a similar amount of success, but whether or not it can sur Mugen Train is an entirely different story.
One Piece Film: Red is the latest One Piece movie that follows Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates getting involved with Shanks’ daughter, Uta. Red has only had limited releases outside of Japan so far, but it’s already been making an incredible amount of money at the box office and recently dethroned One Piece Film: Z to have the highest domestic gross in the franchise. What’s especially impressive is that Red managed to achieve that feat in only about two weeks, so it’s clear that Red is on track to make an incredible amount of money.
That being said, there’s still the question of whether or not it can sur Demon Slayer: Mugen Train’s box office record. Mugen Train still stands as the highest-grossing anime movie of all time, but with the One Piece anime movie having box office returns of a similar scale, there’s definite merit in comparing their performances to predict how they’ll stack up against each other. By that same token, comparisons will also be drawn between One Piece Film: Red and Jujutsu Kaisen 0, as Jujutsu Kaisen 0 is another anime movie released in recent years to massive box office gross.
How One Piece Film: Red’s Box Office Compares To Mugen Train & Jujutsu Kaisen 0
Since One Piece Film: Red is still playing in theaters, its box office can’t be fully compared to Demon Slayer: Mugen Train and Jujutsu Kaisen 0, so what will be compared instead is Red’s current performance against Mugen Train and Jujutsu Kaisen 0’s at the same time. One Piece Film: Red opened to about 2.25 billion yen, and at the time of writing, Red, after about two weeks, has grossed over eight billion yen in Japan (via One Piece anime movie having the highest domestic gross in the franchise, it managed to gross five billion yen in only eight days, making it the second-fastest movie to ever do so in the history of Japan.
Demon Slayer: Mugen Train and Jujutsu Kaisen 0 have very similar box office returns for their first two weeks. Jujutsu Kaisen 0 had a bigger opening than One Piece Film: Red with 2.694 billion yen, but after two weeks in theaters, it had only grossed 6.7 billion yen, about 58 million dollars (via One Piece anime movie's gross after two weeks has managed to be well above Jujutsu Kaisen 0’s, but it's still nowhere near Mugen Train’s.
Can One Piece Film: Red Sur Jujutsu Kaisen 0’s Box Office?
With their various box office totals taken into , it’s highly likely that One Piece Film: Red will sur Studio MAPPA's Jujutsu Kaisen 0 at the box office. By the end of its theatrical run, Jujutsu Kaisen 0 had grossed about 13.5 billion yen, about 105.3 million dollars, at the Japanese box office, meaning that Red has already grossed over half of its domestic returns in just two weeks. Red is still performing incredibly well in Japan, so it should have no problem earning another 5.5 billion yen by the time it completes its theatrical run in Japan.
One Piece Film: Red’s wider international release should also help the One Piece anime movie sur Jujutsu Kaisen 0. Jujutsu Kaisen 0 had a worldwide gross of 190.3 million dollars, meaning that it earned about 85 million dollars from overseas markets. Red already has a faster domestic gross than Jujutsu Kaisen 0, so its international gross should be similarly fast, especially with Toei Animation's One Piece being a far bigger franchise than Jujutsu Kaisen. Add in how Western territories have been putting more stock into anime movies in recent years, a perfect example being how Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero opened across more than triple the number of theaters that Dragon Ball Super: Broly did (via Box Office Mojo), and One Piece Film: Red is bound to have similarly massive box office returns on an international level.
Can One Piece Film: Red Sur Mugen Train’s Box Office?
One Piece Film: Red has a very good chance of beating Jujutsu Kaisen 0’s box office, but unfortunately, it’s very unlikely that it will beat the Demon Slayer: Mugen Train movie box office numbers. As impressive as One Piece Film: Red’s box office growth after two weeks is, it’s still far behind what Mugen Train’s was for the same period of time, and it would be unrealistic to think that Red would be able to catch up. There’s also Ufotable's Demon Slayer: Mugen Train’s overall box office to take into , as it managed to gross a total of 504 million dollars. Not only is Mugen Train the highest-grossing anime film of all time, beating Spirited Away by over 100 million dollars, but it was one of the highest-grossing films of 2020, and that’s likely too high a hurdle for One Piece Film: Red to overcome.
As for why Mugen Train made as much money as it did, there are many factors to take into consideration. For starters, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba was one of the most popular anime of 2019, if not the most popular, and it helped make the series one of the biggest manga franchises in recent years. With Mugen Train being the next installment in the Demon Slayer anime, there was likely a level of momentum and overall hype to Mugen Train that other anime movies couldn’t match. There’s also how COVID restrictions had lightened in Japan at the time, making Mugen Train one of the first movies people were actually able to see since the pandemic began (via New York Times), and that undoubtedly helped with its box office returns. With the COVID situation in Japan not being what it was two years ago, it’s unlikely that One Piece Film: Red can get a similar boost in sales, and that serves to make it even more unlikely for it to Mugen Train at the box office.
One Piece Film: Red has had an incredible run at the box office so far, and as things stand, it’s bound to sur the Jujutsu Kaisen 0 at the box office. However, it’s very unlikely that it will go far enough to sur Mugen Train, as the various factors that allowed for Demon Slayer: Mugen Train’s massive gross can’t be applied to Red. One Piece Film: Red probably won’t be the anime movie to dethrone Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, but at the very least, it should end up with a box office that’s successful in its own right.
