Suzume No Tojimari, the next film from Your Name and Weathering With You director Makoto Shinkai, has been picked up for international release.
The highly anticipated 13th film from the director will be released outside of Japan as a collaboration between Crunchyroll, Sony Pictures and Wild Bunch International. The anime streamer will distribute the movie in North America, and will team up with Sony Pictures Entertainment to release the film in Latin America, South America, Australia/New Zealand, the Middle East, Africa and portions of Europe. The three companies will also work together to will distribute the film in both French and German within Europe. A final premiere date for the animated movie has yet to be announced, but Crunchyroll lists it as an early 2023 release.
As with many of his previous films, Suzume No Tojimari is being both written and directed by Shinkai. Shinkai will once again work with character designer Masayoshi Tanaka, who previously worked with the director on Your Name and Weathering With You. The animated film is being produced at CoMix Wave Films and Story Inc., with Toho distributing.
The film is described as a coming-of-age story focused on the titular Suzume, a 17-year-old girl who lives in a quiet rural town in Japan's southern Kyushu island. One day, Suzume discovers a mysterious door in the middle of an abandoned and ruined building, and is compelled to open it. When she does, however, similar doors suddenly sprout up all over Japan, unleashing disasters whenever they are opened.
Expectations for Suzume No Tojimari are high, as Shinkai is one of the biggest names in the anime industry today, with his work being frequently compared by critics to the medium's most well-known auteur, Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki. The director began his career at video game developer Falcom (Ys, Trails in the Sky) before moving on to anime with his directorial debut, the self-produced short She and Her Cat in 1999. Shinkai's breakout hit arrived in 2016 with the runaway success of the romantic comedy Your Name, which was the first non-Studio Ghibli anime film to earn over $100 million at the Japanese box office. A live-action remake of Your Name is currently in the works at Paramount Pictures.
Several of Shinkai's earlier movies are available on Blu-ray on DVD from distributor GKIDS, while his most recent previous film, 2019's Weathering With You, is available for streaming on HBO Max.
Source: Crunchyroll