Here’s what you need to know about Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc.
Photo: Tatsuki Fujimoto/Sony Pictures/Everett Collection
There’s yet another action anime blockbuster based on a TV series based on a manga poised to tear up the American box office this weekend. This one is called Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arcand it happens to be a fitting spooky-season release. Like Demon Slayer and Attack on Titan before it, the Chainsaw Man The TV series, which is streaming on Crunchyroll and Hulu, is part supernatural horror, part coming-of-age story. The film serves as the latest chapter of the TV show, which is an adaptation of creator Tatsuki Fujimoto’s original manga. That makes it a must-watch theatrical event for Chainsaw fans in the States and elsewhere. It might just dominate this weekend’s theatrical receipts given that it already topped Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhereand some box-office analysts project it could earn as much as $11 million or higher. Anime and anime-inspired animated films like Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle and KPop Demon Hunters have performed very well this year, so here’s a quick rundown of the new film’s whole deal.
For starters, it’s a very literal title. One of 2022’s most exciting debuts and produced by the animation studio MAPPA, the anime is a hodgepodge of demonic violence, crude humor, and speculative fiction. In the world of Chainsaw ManWorld War II never happened and now “devils” run amok. At the start of the series, the Chainsaw Devil meets a young man named Denji, and together they become the Chainsaw Man, a superpowered tough guy with spinning chainsaws that stick out of his hands and head, and join a squad of devil-hunting cops.
Light spoilers incoming: After a bloody battle against a demonic villain called Samurai Sword (picture Chainsaw Man, but instead of chainsaws, he has samurai swords sticking out of his hands and head), the first season ended with a mysterious young woman cryptically wondering whether Denji would prefer to be a country mouse or a city mouse. Manga fans will know that that woman is Reze, aka the Bomb Devil, a girl whom Denji will fall for romantically — a series of events complicated by his prior attraction to his fellow devil hunter Makima. The trailer tees up his infatuation rom-com style before spinning into explosive action.
In international markets, it has already earned $68.3 million since debuting on September 19, in addition to the $3.4 million it’s gotten in US previews, according to the theatrical tally the Numbers. While it’s unlikely to dethrone fellow Sony-released title Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle‘s record-breaking box office, anime analyst Miles Atherton told Polygon it’s still among the most popular anime titles in North America. (Crunchyroll doesn’t share viewership numbers for its series.)
Having already beaten Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere in previews, it could very well threaten Black Phone 2‘s No. 1 spot in that film’s second week, given how much anime, and anime-inspired action animation in particular, has taken off theatrically in recent years. Deadline is coming Black Phone 2 estimated to make $12 million this weekend with Chainsaw Man nipping at its heels at between $11 million and $14 million across 3,000 theaters. VarietyS ‘ estimates for Chainsaw Man are between $11 million and $15 million.
Theatrical titles like Demon Slayer, Dan da Danand Attack on Titan all spun TV series into box-office moments, big and small. The release model has worked before for distributors Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures Releasing, which hold the international rights to Toho’s Chainsaw Man franchise. Similarly, the anime-inspired KPop Demon Hunters managed to make back the cost of nearly its entire production budget over just one weekend with a limited singalong theatrical event, despite being released straight to Netflix months earlier. That one is coming back to theaters for Halloween because it worked so well the first time around.
None of this is a guarantee, of course, that Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc will win this weekend, but it’s worth keeping an eye on. To the extent that Rotten Tomatoes is any kind of barometer of success, it stands at a 100 percent nor of this writing.
For now it’s only in theaters, but eventually, like most of the aforementioned anime titles, we can expect to see it on Crunchyroll. We can’t be certain when, though. (Remember the monthslong wait for The Boy and the Heron?) Unlike American live-action films and their now ubiquitous 30-day windows, anime titles tend to circle most of the globe internationally before they go to streaming release.
It probably couldn’t hurt to dive deeper into the lore and relationships, but the movie is relatively self-contained. Chainsaw Man is generally pretty direct — did I mention it’s about a man with chainsaws for hands? — so if you’re worried you’ll be confuseddon’t do. Or watch a YouTube recap or two beforehand. It’s worth a spin regardless.
There is. We won’t say too much as that would risk getting too deep into the events of the film, but we will say: Don’t miss it. It doesn’t tee up the next season or anything, but it does put a nice capper on the events of the movie.
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