Netflix’s ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ probably the biggest movie in theaters right now

24 Aug 2025

A singalong version of the Netflix animated film “KPop Demon Hunters” is on track to earn $18 million to $20 million in theaters this weekend, making it the No. 1 movie at the domestic box office. And that’s despite only being in theaters for two-thirds of the weekend (namely, Saturday and Sunday).

This isn’t the first time a streaming title has topped the box office charts. In fact, Apple’s “F1” (distributed in U.S. theaters by Warner Bros.) opened to an even more impressive $57 million earlier this summer. But this marks the first time Netflix has had the biggest movie in theaters.

The victory comes with some asterisks, most notably that Netflix doesn’t announce box office returns itself. So these aren’t official numbers from the streamer, but rather preliminary weekend estimates from other industry sources.

This was, admittedly, a quiet weekend, without major new releases. Besides “KPop Demon Hunters,” the top-grossing movie was “Weapons,” which made an estimated $15.4 million in its third weekend in theaters, for a $115 million domestic total.

Still, this feels like a milestone for a company that has avoided traditional theatrical releases (a stance that may have driven away some of its most successful filmmakers). The closest it’s come is a one-week release of Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” sequel “Glass Onion,” which earned an estimated $15 million in theaters. And then there’s Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia” adaptation, which will probably do even bigger box office numbers when it launches exclusively on Imax screens next fall.