Asia 2025 Box Office: Animation, Patriotism & Polarisation

Liz Shackleton

24 Jan 2026 — 9 min read

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle

Box office across Asia was a mixed bag in 2025. Some territories had record-breaking years, some were middling, others looked like they were sliding towards terminal decline. Many factors influenced results – demographics, ticket price, property and therefore rental and other costs borne by cinemas, and of course the flow of films from local industries and the audience relationship with a declining number of Hollywood tentpoles. After going through figures for most of the larger territories, a few other trends stood out...

ANIMATION:

After decades of consuming and being culturally influenced by Japanese anime, it should come as no surprise that other Asian film industries would eventually improve technical and storytelling skills in this medium and start making animated films that are embraced by audiences across the region.

Japanese anime still ruled the Asian box office in 2025 – Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle was the highest grossing film in Japan (with $248.7m domestically) and was a hit across the region, but China and Indonesia’s top-grossing films were also homegrown animations, Ne Zha 2 ($2.2bn) and Jumbo (10.2 million admissions), respectively.

Malaysia, a long-term animation outsourcing hub, scored animated hits with Papa Zola The Movie, released in December, which has grossed $15m to become the biggest local animated film of all time, overtaking Ejen Ali The Movie 2, which took $12m earlier in the year. Even India got in on the act with devotional animated film Mahavatar Narsimha landing at number six in the year-end top ten with $33m.

Ne Zha 2 was not even the only local animated film in China’s top ten last year – Nobody, a distinctive spin on Chinese classic Journey To The West, grossed $245m over the summer to rank at number six, while Boonie Bears: Future Reborn, the latest installment in a long-running Lunar New Year franchise, landed at number nine with $117m. Hong Kong’s highest-grossing local film in 2025 was also an animation – Tommy Ng’s afterlife fantasy Another World, which took $2m (although it has since been outgrossed by live-action sci-fi Back To The Past released on December 31, 2025).

Hollywood animation also performed well across the region in 2025, with Disney’s Zootopia 2 coming in second at the China box office with $615m to date and topping South Korea’s 2025 box office with just over $50m (while Demon Slayer came in second in Korea with $42m). Disney’s Avatar: Fire And Ash, not strictly speaking animation but heavily CGI-driven, was also a year-end hit across the region. Then of course there was Netflix’s global streaming hit Kpop Demon Hunters, a Korean culture-inspired story produced by Sony Animation.

However, it’s clear that Asian animation is now becoming a real competitor to Hollywood, due to its higher cultural relevance; fast-improving technical skills, especially with animators returning to Asia from the US; and huge reservoirs of recognisable IP from comics, webtoons and games. And while animation is usually family friendly, it’s also increasingly accepted across all age groups in Asia thanks to the conditioning of multi-generational Japanese anime. Of course, the downside to relying on animation for a box office boost is that the production process is very long, it may be several years before we see the next installment in the Ne Zha series, but then again, AI technology may be helping to speed things up.

PATRIOTISM:

There are many types of film that could be described as patriotic or nationalistic – both polite adjectives for propaganda – but they usually have one thing in common in that they convey the messaging of the ruling powers of the country in which they’re made. They appear to have something else in common these days – they are dynamite at the local box office.

China has decades of experience in this kind of filmmaking and over the years has transformed didactic treatises on Communist Party victories in their fight against the Nationalists into entertaining and well-made action blockbusters spanning multiple wars and historical events. In summer 2025, the 80th anniversary of China’s “War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression” prompted a spate of films focusing on Japan’s atrocities against China, including Dead To Rights, set during the Nanjing Massacre, which ranked at number four in the year-end chart with $431m, while Evil Unbound, about biological and chemical warfare conducted by Japan’s infamous Unit 731, ranked at number five with $277m.

Vietnam’s top film of 2025 – and highest-grossing local film of all time with $27m – Red Rain (Mua Do), produced by the People’s Army Film Studio, was a retelling of key events in the Vietnam War (aka the American War), but from Vietnam’s point of view, as opposed to the Hollywood version we are accustomed to seeing. India’s top-grossing film of 2025, Dhurandhar, which raked in $105m, is a bombastic action thriller about an anti-terror operation in Pakistan, while Chhaava, the third highest-grossing film of the year with $75m, revolves around the Maratha-Mughal War. Neither film is particularly subtle in its ‘Hindu good guys’ versus ‘Muslim bad guys’ messaging.

In some cases and countries, there is official state “encouragement” for audiences to see these films. But more often than not, it’s also just the media discourse and/or controversy around the films that creates word of mouth and drives audiences to the cinema. After all, this is an era in which the age-old power structures are crumbling and many countries are questioning conventional narratives and rediscovering cultural pride and identity. These films very rarely travel beyond diaspora audiences – but often their box office is so big that they don’t need to.

Sadly, however, one aspect of nationalistic filmmaking can be the reinforcement of cultural identity through “othering” and the creation of real or imagined enemies. Bollywood’s mainstream cinema is currently going through this phase, aligning with government narratives about Hindu supremacy and threat of Islamic terrorism. Former Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao recently wrote a revealing piece in the Times of India about the dangers of these kinds of blockbusters in regard to what they say and don’t say about actual terrorism.

So far, South Indian cinema is mostly resisting the propaganda trend, but for how long when there is not just political but also economic pressure to make these kinds of films? At least one lesson we can take from China’s experience in propaganda filmmaking is that audiences tend to get tired of this diet after a while and turn to other sources of nourishment. It may be suitable for certain holidays and anniversaries, when national pride is riding high, but perhaps not year round.

POLARISATION:

So it became clear in 2025 that animation and patriotic works have become the new mass entertainment movies that get audiences off their sofas and into theatres – more so than the Hollywood superhero films or Korean action blockbusters of pre-pandemic days. But nearly everywhere in the world, the number of films that pull in mid-range box office – not blockbusters but not niche or arthouse either – are continuing to decline. While this was already a trend before the pandemic, the rise of streaming and shrinking of theatrical windows has made audiences further accustomed to waiting a few weeks to see those films not classed as “event movies” in the comfort of their own homes.

Recent box office analysis out of Japan told a familiar story. Although Japan is one of the healthier box office markets in the region, the number of local films grossing JPY1bn, the benchmark for commercial success, was just 29 last year, compared to around 40 before the pandemic. Meanwhile, only 11 foreign films achieved that benchmark in Japan last year, compared to 25 in 2019.

Another trend across the region, if not the world, is an increase in ticket prices, which is giving the impression of box office recovery even as admissions decline. India’s box office reached a record $1.48bn in 2025, but that was off the back of a 20% rise in average ticket prices, while admissions were down by 6% to 832 million.

It was a similar story in North America, where box office revenues were flat at around $8.9bn in 2025, but admissions were down nearly 5%, while in France, admissions decreased by 13.6% year-on-year to 157 million. Spain saw an 8% decline in admissions to 65 million. Italy’s admissions were stable in 2025, at around 68 million, driven by local hits including Buen Camino, but still way down on pre-pandemic admissions of around 100 million a year.

Of course ticket prices can only increase so much before audiences turn their backs on cinemas, even for the event movies. It does seem like a no-brainer that markets that don’t protect their theatrical windows are going to see mid-range films disappear at the box office. For this reason, Netflix’s claims that they will maintain a 45-day window for Warner Bros movies is not totally reassuring. Consumers, faced by the rising expense of not just cinema tickets, but also transport and concessions, may feel that 45 days is short enough to justify waiting to see something on the small screen.

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Asia 2025 Box Office: Animation, Patriotism & Polarisation

Liz Shackleton

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