GKIDS Acquires Takahata’s ‘The Tale of The Princess Kaguya’ for U.S. Distribution

GKIDS announced today that they have entered into a distribution agreement with Studio Ghibli for the North American rights to The Tale of The Princess Kaguya, the new film by 78-year-old director and Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, Pom Poko).

GKIDS will take all of Kaguya’s theatrical, non-theatrical, home video and television rights in North America. Last year GKIDS distributed Ghibli’s From Up on Poppy Hill, which became the distributor’s first million-dollar grossing animated feature.

Studio Ghibli is producing an English-language vesrion of the film. Ghibli’s Geoffrey Wexler will produce, with Frank Marshall of Kennedy/Marshall exec producing. This is the same team that handled English versions for the two previous Studio Ghibli films, The Wind Rises and From Up on Poppy Hill.

Kaguya, which is based on the folktake “Tale of the Bamboo Cutter,” has been a modest success in its home country of Japan, grossing $22.7 million to date (or less than a fifth of the box office gross of Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises). The film will be released in the U.S. this fall and will be submitted for Oscar qualification.