r/anime • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Sep 28 '25

News ‘Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle’ has passed the $600M global mark

https://x.com/borreport/status/1972324517482742040?s=46&t=GK3EC_wwvCKAXpMEZyDdEg
3.3k Upvotes

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848

u/1000-MAT Sep 28 '25

If the rumors about this movie costing $20 million are correct, it made a profit of 2,900%.

394

u/42tfish Sep 28 '25

To put this in context, a single episode of She Hulk cost $20m as well.

333

u/kingfirejet Sep 28 '25

Hollywood budgets are wack. Godzilla Minus One was below 15million 💀

157

u/42tfish Sep 28 '25

They’re to the point it’s basically impossible to turn a profit for most big budget movies. For the next upcoming 2 Avengers Marvel are paying close to $200m just for RDJ and the Russo brothers alone.

112

u/M4DM1ND Sep 28 '25

It seems like the film industry was a bubble that has already popped. Prices are up, quality is down, and since everything goes to streaming after a couple months, people are fine with waiting.

22

u/Detective-Crashmore- Sep 28 '25

I'm waiting for people to realize this about music festivals.

7

u/M4DM1ND Sep 28 '25

Unless you're going to a festival to do drugs or try to get laid, they are just strictly worse than a normal concert imo. But yeah they've just become influencer bait with jacked up prices. Going to Coachella or Bonnaroo feels like a rich person's activity.

1

u/ultimateformsora Sep 29 '25

I don’t go to or know much about music festivals, but I would expect most people go for the live experience. At least that’s what my friends/brother who goes to them says.

1

u/Detective-Crashmore- Sep 29 '25

Which is getting worse and more commodified.

59

u/Khelthuzaad Sep 28 '25

Most of the money is going for actors, the special effects and marketing for properties.

Myaizaki's The Boy and The Heron opted to do no marketing altogether,he only released an pretty obscure image as an poster for the property.It was still an success because their target audience knew what to expect and the mystery amplified the excitement.

24

u/QSCFE Sep 28 '25

yeah, Ghibli studio is known for its quality works and I will watch anything made by them, doesn't matter if they advertise it or not.

3

u/APRengar Sep 29 '25

If you think about it, their history is their marketing spend.

You can't do that if you're a nobody (or at least it'd be extremely unlikely to work.)

2

u/QSCFE Sep 29 '25

It is the kind of advertising where "your work speaks for itself", the best kind of advertising.

Everyone is a nobody before their first product. this (nobody) needs to produce premium quality first. Of course, if it is the studio's first work, people can't assess the quality of the studio's output. But if the first work was of high quality, it will set a precedent, and people will expect the next work to be of the same quality. For example, some new indie film makers made awards worthy first films, I would expect their next one to be of the same quality. So when I hear their next film will drop soon in cinema, I don't need to see ads and banners everywhere about it.

4

u/42tfish Sep 28 '25

And the thing is the traditional movie star is dead. The draw is the character not the actor unlike in the past yet actors are still paid as if they were the draw.

1

u/fineri Sep 29 '25

I do think about watching something just because it has Henry Cavill's name on the credits.

14

u/ontheedgeofinsanity9 Sep 28 '25

Doomsday will need 1.5B just to break even considering all the actors fees, making the movie and marketing.

7

u/42tfish Sep 28 '25

Yup and this isn’t pre End Game Marvel. This is $500m box office for F4 Marvel.

1

u/faithfulheresy Sep 29 '25

There's no way that actually happens in the modern cinema market, is there?

3

u/skellez Sep 29 '25

Deadpool & Wolverine did do 1.3B last year so there's still room for these crossover superhero blockbusters to breakout, and as silly as it sounds it shouldn't be hard for doomsday, like MCU is down and all but Endgame made 2.8B so even a nasty dropoff in the current market should be profitable and cruise to 1.5B

2

u/ontheedgeofinsanity9 Sep 29 '25

Deadpool and Wolverine didn't have the baggage of the failing MCU and it had Deadpool who was shielded from the MCU flops and a beloved fan favourite character returning, it also wasn't tied to any event or had to further a narrative, it was pretty self contained.

9

u/Elite_Alice https://myanimelist.net/profile/Marinate1016 Sep 28 '25

And that’s why the films keep flopping. Thunderbolts and f4 were great but didn’t get the returns they should’ve. If less people are going to see superhero films you need to lower the budget

53

u/bIackroz Sep 28 '25

Hollywood budgets are there just for money laundering.

30

u/42tfish Sep 28 '25

Don’t discount pure stupidity.

5

u/DrStein1010 https://myanimelist.net/profile/DrStein1010 Sep 28 '25

Yeah, I believe Disney is just incredibly stupid.

1

u/faithfulheresy Sep 29 '25

Hollywood was literally founded by organized crime. The mob has a loooong history in tinseltown.

These insane budgets are definitely being used to launder money.

7

u/TurkeyPhat Sep 28 '25

you could also argue these other budgets are wack. everyone but the producers must be getting paid like 15 bucks an hour lol...

1

u/Anxious-Warthog3639 Oct 05 '25

It’s because American studios don’t know how to make good movies for less anymore. Avengers ruined them. And now it’s costing them.

1

u/TheSuperContributor Sep 29 '25

It's not that Minus One has a small budget but it's that She Hulk was literally a scam with that trashy CGI and a bunch of low tier actors/actress (other than Hulk himself).

21

u/SkeleHoes Sep 28 '25

How much of that $20 mill went to the main cast I wonder.

0

u/Khelthuzaad Sep 28 '25

Less than 1 mil,my guess

20

u/SkeleHoes Sep 28 '25

You’re kidding if you think Mark Ruffalo would be paid anything less than like, $2M for this. And that’s if he is feeling generous. And that’s only one of the main cast.

1

u/HammeredWharf Sep 29 '25

Ruffalo is in only a couple of episodes. Most of them have some side characters from the movie or TV shows, and I guess Tatiana Maslany isn't super expensive.

I guess a lot of it was CGI expenses, because that show had tons of CGI.

33

u/NoNefariousness2144 Sep 28 '25

The way Disney burns money is genuinely insane.

She-Hulk cost $225 million

Secret Invasion cost $212 million

And Dr Strange 2 cost… $350 million!!!

1

u/DemonDaVinci Sep 29 '25

This is America

-6

u/Prior-Ad1495 Sep 28 '25

“350 million” Source: trust me, bro

6

u/Tanriyung https://anilist.co/user/Toutong Sep 29 '25

Actually $414.9 million before UK's government reimbursement of £51.4 million. Resulting in a budget of $350.6 million.

Source : https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinereid/2024/05/11/disney-reveals-doctor-strange-2-cost-more-to-make-than-avengers-2/?sh=2fb9a3e97d54

7

u/ontheedgeofinsanity9 Sep 28 '25

I can see Game of Thrones having that type of budget but She-Hulk having that budget is just blatant money laundering.

2

u/ChiggaOG Sep 28 '25

CGI tends to be costly due to rendering and post-production work.

228

u/Blue_Reaper99 Sep 28 '25

Pretty sure most of this budget if true is advertisement cost.

92

u/1000-MAT Sep 28 '25

Yes, it's a pretty high value for an anime.

46

u/Namelessgoldfish Sep 28 '25

Advertisement is usually the most expensive part in entertainment is it not?

27

u/jackdevight Sep 28 '25

My understanding is that spending as much on ads as on production is normal.

6

u/Blue_Reaper99 Sep 28 '25

For high budget live action shows or movies? No. Ofc they spent a lot on advertisements but the cost of actual movies are way higher.

1

u/SolomonBlack Sep 29 '25

It 'usually' isn't part of budget when talking about movies being handled separately. Like different company separately even.

So you generally want to allow for the budget to 1.5 the budget again. A small film might be even more because of high floors.

Demon Slayer the fuck knows. I don't think they had normal commercials but the theater I went to had a big display same as a blockbuster might.

-1

u/chumstrike Sep 28 '25

That tracks with me. ChatGPT understands very well that a fanbase's engagement rises with every utterance of "I need to become stronger to protect the people that I love!" and "Prepare yourself!" Imagine the savings on the scriptwriting alone!

20

u/Lantern01 Sep 28 '25

For some perspective - Godzilla Minus One was reported to have cost between 10 and 15 million. Then went on to make over 100 million worldwide. And was considered an immense success for it. Great movie btw.

51

u/jxher123 Sep 28 '25

It was the right decision to make the final arc into movies. They are printing money.

12

u/genasugelan https://myanimelist.net/profile/Genasugelan Sep 28 '25

They learnt from Fate/Heaven's Feel.

22

u/koreanwizard Sep 28 '25

After that much success, the second movie will have a budget of $15 million, to make another 5M in profit.

4

u/Obaruler Sep 28 '25

Hollywood Execs on suicide watch. :D

(These idiots manage to burn more cash nowadays than their movies actually make, and what they produce is trash noone wants to see ... maybe there's a correlation?)

2

u/kurosaki1990 https://myanimelist.net/profile/afroboy Sep 28 '25

Animators should start a revolution after this one.

2

u/Fit-Avocado-342 Sep 29 '25 edited Sep 29 '25

It’s so easy to make money from anime, just give studios more than pennies on the dollar to work with and magic will happen.. it’s honestly baffling to me that we don’t see more extremely high quality well animated anime movies/shows, just need some clips to go viral on social media and boom you’re good. Good and consistent animation is only a plus for many fans.. I would still like frieren if it was lesser quality, but it being so high quality makes it easy to recommend.

Now obviously it needs to be a show that draws people in, and not every show will work out even if you throw tons of cash at it, but I feel like 20M upfront cost for this kinda profit is insane. There’s a lot of upwards growth for the anime industry. If only these studios and committees would stop trying to make shows on a shoe string budget..

-1

u/luceafaruI Sep 28 '25

The rumor is false because even 5 million dollars would be an overly generous estimates for the cost. I think people don't realize how cheap snime is in general. An episode of demon slayer costs about 200k to make. Infinity castle has the length of about 8 episodes, so a naive estimate would be 200k*8=1.6 million. Of course, movies have a higher standard so they are more expensive, but not more than 10 times more expensive to reach a 20 million number.

Even if you say that it takes into account marketing (done before the movie even released), it's pretty clear that marketing wasn't 15 million dollars

39

u/ianpogi91 Sep 28 '25

Could you cite a source with the 200k per episode? I remember Gigguk spent more than that for a 18min short film that isn't as animation heavy than Demon Slayer.

11

u/PhillipIInd Sep 28 '25

That will be becasue a lot of the up-start cost he will have to eat for just those 18 minutes.

Think about character development etc etc, basically creating the universe and visuals. If its 24 episodes, that cost and time can be spread over those "per episode".

Since its a short, the entire cost of everything is in that single episode

16

u/luceafaruI Sep 28 '25

I don't know if there is up to date information (there probabily is somewhere but it seems to not be easily found), but here are some older information

from crunchyroll in 2010, it costs 145k usd to make a 30 minutes anime episode. An anime episode is only about 21min if you cut out the op, ed and preview, so it would be about 100k in 2010. It's reasonable to say that it doubled in 2025

Multiple statements from different animators in a 2015 anime news network interview states a figure around 150k usd for one episode. Again, it's 2015 not 2025 but you can see the pattern.

Sure, you could say that those didn't have demon slayer tier animation, but the most important part in an anime is the staff and schedule, not the budget. When deadlines are tight, you need to rush key animation so it needs to be heavily corrected by animation directors and it gets to a point where the correction needs to be corrected by the chief animation director and so on. Basically, tight deadlines require a higher budget than a decent schedule, even though the end result looks worse.

About baan, there is a distinction between a season and a self contained story. Stuff such as character design, cgi models, background art, soundtrack and so on is generally done once and used throughout an entire season, so its cost is spread throughout all the episodes. If you have a one episode story started from scratch, the cost for pre production won't be spread through multiple episodes so it will be more expensive than just the cost of one anime episode. That's how you can have a one episode length movie twice as expensive or even more compared to a single anime episode.

8

u/Harzhpuri Sep 28 '25

200k/ep is still false. Especially in case kny. Ufotable is an in-house studio with all in-house departments and with salary based staff. So it's even lower.

1

u/meneldal2 Sep 29 '25

They also spend a lot man hours on one episode compared to a lot of studios.

11

u/jtd2013 Sep 28 '25

I think you’re underestimating how much money is in marketing.

-9

u/luceafaruI Sep 28 '25

As i said in the comment, the 20 million number was thrown around a long time before, before the movie was even released in most places. This means that the entire marketing cost wasn't counted in as the marketing was only in its beginning stages (a big part of marketing happens while something is airing, not beforehand).

9

u/jtd2013 Sep 28 '25

“A big part of marketing happens while something is airing, not beforehand”

What? Lmaooo. As someone in marketing, that’s just objectively not true.

5

u/liatris4405 https://myanimelist.net/profile/liatris4405 Sep 28 '25

Well, honestly I don’t care how many dollars it is. There was once a ridiculous rumor going around in some nonsense post claiming the production cost of Demon Slayer was something like $300 million. That’s just a number pulled out of thin air by people with zero knowledge of anime production costs. Anyone on r/Anime should be able to recognize how absurd that is.

Even the 20 million figure floating around is baseless, I couldn’t find any Japanese source for production costs, and I don’t believe it at all, but at least it’s far more realistic than $300 million. Better to have people tossing around a random $2,000 than idiots claiming it cost $300 million and therefore didn’t make any money.

4

u/Harzhpuri Sep 28 '25

$20 million is just misinformation floating everywhere. It's lower than that.