Cosmic Princess Kaguya Just Beat a Ghibli Classic at the Box Office

An anime film that premiered on Netflix in January 2026 has turned into one of the most remarkable theatrical stories of the year in Japan. Cosmic Princess Kaguya, a moon-princess tale from director Shingo Yamashita, has crossed three billion yen at the Japanese box office after returning to theaters in September 2026 for a wave of revival screenings, according to an announcement on the film's official X account reported by Anime.com.

The revival run put the film back into 247 Japanese theaters, with premium showings in MX4D, 4DX, ScreenX, Ultra 4DX and Dolby Atmos formats alongside standard screenings. The four-day return added roughly two million dollars to the total, pushing the audience past one and a half million moviegoers and lifting the cumulative gross above nineteen million dollars. With that, the film passed Studio Ghibli's The Tale of the Princess Kaguya from 2013, which earned about fifteen million dollars in Japan, making Yamashita's feature the highest-grossing anime adaptation of the classic Taketori Monogatari folk tale ever released there.

A streaming film's slow road to the big screen

The box office milestone caps an unusually patient release strategy. The film first premiered worldwide on Netflix on January 22, 2026, then opened theatrically in Japan on February 20 in just 19 theaters. Word of mouth carried it to 100 theaters by March, and it passed two and a half billion yen by mid-May. Its first theatrical run ended on June 18 after roughly four months, having earned more than sixteen million dollars from about one point three million tickets, which made it the fourth-highest-grossing Japanese anime film of 2026 at that point, behind Detective Conan the Movie: Fallen Angel of the Highway, Doraemon the Movie: Nobita and the New Castle of the Undersea Devil, and Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway's Flash, according to industry tracking summarized by Animinutes.

The production itself was a meeting of newer and established talent. It was Yamashita's first feature as director, animated jointly by Studio Colorido and Studio Chromato. The story follows Iroha, an ordinary girl whose life changes when Kaguya, a runaway from the Moon, moves in and talks her into performing together inside a virtual world. Netflix streams the film in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and more than 120 other territories, which means most of its global audience met it on a phone or TV screen long before it became a theatrical record-breaker.

How it measures up against 2026's anime giants

To put the three-billion-yen run in context, Japan's biggest film of 2026 is operating on another scale entirely. Eiga Chiikawa: The Secret of Mermaid Island, the first film based on Nagano's Chiikawa manga, had sold more than eleven million tickets for over sixteen billion yen by late September 2026, ranking as the fifteenth-highest-grossing film in Japanese box office history. It held the number-one spot for nine straight weekends after opening on July 24, according to Anime News Network. The same weekend the Kaguya revival returned at number six, the new Star Detective Precure! film opened at number three.

That contrast is what makes the Kaguya story interesting. Chiikawa was a blockbuster sprint; Kaguya has been a slow burn, built on a streaming premiere, a careful theatrical expansion and now a premium-format revival. And the Ghibli comparison carries symbolic weight beyond the numbers. Isao Takahata's 2013 Princess Kaguya remains the critical benchmark for the folk tale on screen, and a Netflix-originated, virtual-idol-styled retelling outpacing it at the box office marks a generational shift in what anime audiences show up for. The counterpoint is worth noting too: revival screenings in MX4D and Dolby Atmos carry higher ticket prices, so premium formats flatter the gross. Box office records measure revenue, not consensus.

What the run says about anime's theatrical era

The milestone points to a playbook other streaming-first anime films are likely to copy. A limited theatrical opening, an expansion driven by word of mouth, and a premium-format revival months later can give a film three separate lives at the box office. For viewers who streamed Kaguya on Netflix back in January, the revival model means anime films keep getting second chances on the big screen, and the 4DX version of a virtual-world concert story is a meaningfully different experience from watching it on a laptop.

The Kaguya run also keeps the spotlight on the newer studios behind it. Studio Colorido and Studio Chromato animated the film, and its success adds to a year in which Japanese animation has dominated the domestic box office from every angle, from franchise juggernauts to first-time feature directors. For more on where anime is headed next, see our Anime & Animation coverage, including the newly announced Hirayasumi anime adaptation arriving in January 2027.