Anime leader Crunchyroll has acquired the worldwide distribution rights (excluding Asia, with the exception of India) to the next feature film from acclaimed filmmaker Makoto Shinkai, with Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures Entertainment to co-distribute. The project marks the latest highly anticipated release from Shinkai, one of the most successful and influential animation directors working today.
Plot details, along with the title and release date, are not being disclosed at this time.
Most recently, Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures previously partnered on the global distribution of Shinkai’s Suzume (2023), which grossed over $300 million worldwide and received critical acclaim, including a Golden Globe nomination. Suzumepremiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival—the first anime feature to do so in decades—further cementing Shinkai’s status as a globally recognized auteur.
Shinkai’s prior works – including Your Name. and Weathering With You – have achieved both major commercial success and international recognition, helping to redefine the global reach of Japanese animation. Your Name. (2016) became a worldwide phenomenon and one of the highest-grossing anime films of all time, while Weathering With You (2019) was Japan’s official submission for the Academy Awards® for Best International Feature Film.
Makoto Shinkai was born in Nagano Prefecture in 1973. In 2002 he debuted his self-produced short-film Voices of a Distant Star, which won many awards starting with the Tokyo International Anime Fair 21. In 2004 he created his first full-length movie The Place Promised in Our Early Days to great acclaim, which went on to win Best Animated Film at the 59th Mainichi Film Concours. In 2007 he released 5 Centimeters Per Second which won Best Animated Feature Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, as well as the Lancia Platinum Grand Prize at Italy’s Future Film Festival. In 2011 Children Who Chase Lost Voices was released in theaters nationwide and presented internationally as a work unlike the world had ever seen before, winning the “Golden Monkey King” Award at the 8th China International Cartoon and Animation Festival. In 2012 he received a Letter of Appreciation from the Cabinet Secretariat’s National Policy Unit as one of the “Global Messengers of Japan”. In 2013 he released, The Garden of Words, which won Best Anime Feature Film in Germany’s Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film. Also that year he was awarded the Shinmai Select Prize.
In 2016, Your Name. was released to great commercial success, becoming the second-highest-grossing Japanese film. At the 40th Japan Academy Film Prize, it won Excellent Director of the Year and Screenplay of the Year, a first for an animated film. Also critically acclaimed overseas, it won many awards including Best Animated Feature Length Film at the 49th Sitges Film Festival, as well as Best Animated Film at the 42nd Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards. In 2019, Weathering With You won Animation of the Year at the 43rd Japan Academy Film Prize and was selected as the Japanese entry for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards. 2022’s Suzume marked his third film in a row with over 10 million domestic attendance. It also received high domestic and international regard, being selected for competition at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival and nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at the 81st Golden Globe Awards.
