The Deer King, the latest work from Spirited Away and Your Name animation director Masashi Ando, will receive a theatrical release in the United States and Canada in 2022.

GKIDS announced that it acquired the licensing and distribution rights to the film with a new trailer.  The Deer King is co-directed by Ando and Masayuki Miyaji, who also worked on Spirited Away, as well as anime series such as Xam'd: Lost Memories, Eureka Seven and Detective Conan. The movie is animated by Production IG, the studio best known for its work on Ghost in the Shell, Haikyu!! and Eden of the East. The film will be available in theaters with either its original Japanese audio track with subtitles, or dubbed in English. The Deer King is the second high-profile anime film that GKIDS has licensed recently, as the company also announced that it will distribute Mamoru Hosoda's Belle in North America as well.

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The Deer King is based on an award-winning fantasy novel series by Nahoko Uehashi, began publication in 2014 and has sold over 2.2 million copies in Japan alone. It tells the story of a feudal society devastated by war and disease, and the only two people, a solitary warrior and a small child, who are immune to a deadly plague that is sweeping the land.

Ando and Miyaji's new film is the latest of Uehashi's works to be adapted into anime by Production IG; two of the author's earlier works, Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit and The Beast Player were both turned into TV series by the studio. Moribito aired on Adult Swim in 2008 and was licensed by Sentai Filmworks in 2020, which re-released the complete series on Blu-ray in the same year.

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Source: YouTube