Crunchyroll, Sony, And Wild Bunch Team To Distribute Makoto Shinkai’s ‘Suzume no Tojimari’ Worldwide
Crunchyroll has picked up global distribution and marketing rights outside of Asia for Makoto Shinkai’s upcoming feature, Suzume no Tojimari (working title).
The film will debut in Japan on November 11 of this year and begin hitting other major territories in early 2023. Crunchyroll has exclusive distribution rights to the film for North America, and will distribute with its parent corporation Sony Pictures Entertainment in Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, and parts of Europe. In French and German-language European territories, Wild Bunch International will join the Crunchyroll and Sony as a co-distributor.
Shinkai’s work has stood out for years, but more recently the filmmaker has enjoyed historic levels of box office success with his two most recent features Your Name and Weathering With You. The latter was selected as Japan’s international feature submission for the 2020 Academy Awards and ranks as the sixth-highest grossing anime title of all time with a $190 million global box office total. Your Name is third on that list, pulling in a staggering $380 million worldwide.
GKIDS distributed Weathering With You in North America, and earlier this year acquired distribution rights for four of Shinkai’s earlier features: The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004), the romantic drama 5 Centimeters per Second (2007), the fantasy-adventure Children Who Chase Lost Voices (2011), and the short film Voices of a Distant Star (2002). The Crunchyroll pickup of Suzume no Tojimari is something of a coup for the Sony-owned distributor, although Funimation – also owned by Sony – distributed Your Name in North America.
Suzume no Tojimari follows 17-year-old Suzume in her quest to close mystical doors all over Japan to avoid unthinkable devastation. When the trailer for the film was released last month, Shinkai described his latest as “a story about closure” – apparently both literally and metaphorically.
