Julia Stoll
Research expert covering TV and video media
Animation industry - statistics & facts
Animation has become one of the most globally contested entertainment formats, with major producing nations vying for audiences across theatrical, broadcast, and streaming channels. As of May 2026, the Chinese animated feature "Ne Zha 2" topped the highest-grossing animated films list with 2.26 billion U.S. dollars in worldwide box office revenue, displacing long-standing American franchises from the top of the all-time ranking. Japan's anime overseas revenue reached 2.17 trillion Japanese yen in 2024, up from just 0.33 trillion yen a decade earlier, reflecting the growing global demand for Asian-produced animation.
Japan anchors the global animation economy
A breakdown of the Japanese anime industry by segment shows that overseas revenue was the single largest category in 2024, far ahead of domestic merchandising at 748.8 billion yen and pachinko at 301.5 billion yen. Within Japan, traditional broadcast television has lost ground to digital distribution: TV anime broadcasting revenue stood at 98.2 billion yen in 2024, broadly unchanged from the 97.3 billion yen recorded the year before.
"KPop Demon Hunters" signals streaming animation's cultural reach
Netflix's animated film "KPop Demon Hunters" became a landmark for streaming animation after its premiere on June 15, 2025, accumulating 628.2 million views worldwide and becoming Netflix's most-watched English-language movie of all time. Weekly viewership of "KPop Demon Hunters" on Netflix peaked at 30.1 million views in the week of August 25 to 31, 2025. The film's theatrical release further demonstrated its commercial pull: a sing-along version released two months after the Netflix debut generated a聽"KPop Demon Hunters" opening weekend of 18 million U.S. dollars in the United States and Canada alone. The dedicated anime platform Crunchyroll reflected broader streaming demand for animation, with Crunchyroll paying subscribers reaching 17 million as of March 2025, more than triple the five million counted in mid-2021.
Asian studios drive the animation industry's next chapter
South Korean animation has gained traction internationally: a 2025 survey across 30 countries found that 28.8 percent of respondents considered Korean animation worldwide popularity to be at the level of the general public, with a further 24.7 percent rating it as widely known with related goods available. China's domestic animated film market demonstrated comparable ambition, with China animated movie box office revenue reaching 7.99 billion yuan in 2023, recovering from a pandemic-era low of 3.61 billion yuan recorded between 2020 and 2022. For decades, Hollywood studios set the commercial benchmarks for animated film and television. Recent data suggests this era has ended: the box office, the streaming charts, and the export ledgers are all telling the same story of an industry whose creative and commercial center of gravity has moved east.
