10 Highest Grossing Movies That STILL Surprise Us
5. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Movie: Mugen Train
Though it would be ridiculous to suggest that anime was in any way niche in this day and age, it's still fair to say that few predicted the storming commercial success of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Movie: Mugen Train, which is a sequel to the first season of the Demon Slayer TV series.
Produced for just $15.7 million, the film grossed a staggering $507.1 million globally.
This would be a jaw-dropping figure for a sequel to an anime TV series in any year, but the fact that it happened at the height of the global pandemic in 2020 is truly outstanding.
More to the point, the movie ended up the highest-grossing film of 2020, easily beating out Hollywood competition such as Bad Boys for Life, Tenet, and Sonic the Hedgehog, and marking the first time in history that the annual box office had been topped by a non-Hollywood movie.
There's no denying, however, that Demon Slayer's release was a true moment in time for Japanese audiences above all else - the film was fortunate to release during a calm period of the pandemic for Japan, and with little other competition at the cinema, it dominated the box office unchallenged.
This unsurprisingly wasn't replicated in other markets around the world, and so unless you're an anime fan, there's a good chance this movie passed you by entirely.