According to a report from Variety, Funimation will be releasing Japanese blockbuster Kimi no Na Wa (Your Name) in theatres before the end of 2017 in a bid to get the anime film Oscar consideration.
Your Name will run at Los Angeles’ Laemmle Music Hall for one week, Dec. 2 to 9, qualifying it for the 2016 Oscars. A film must run for a week in LA county in order to qualify. A wider theatrical release is planned for the first quarter of 2017.
Kimi no Na Wa has topped the Japanese box office for nine weeks in a row and is currently at a cumulative total of $157 million. The movie is now Japan’s fourth highest-grossing anime film, fifth highest-grossing Japanese film, and ninth highest-grossing film of all time in Japan. According to Variety, analysts expect the film to reach up to $200 million.
You can check out a Japanese-language trailer for Kimi no Na Wa below:
Kimi no Na Wa has now surpassed Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo anime film, as well as James Cameron's Avatar film. The only anime films to earn more are Ghibli and Miyazaki's Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle and Princess Mononoke .
The film, themed around “miracles and love,” follows the story of high school students Mitsuha and Taki. In dreams, they swap bodies. While a love story, Kimi no Na Wa features several more layers of complexity as the two protagonists search for the secret to their dream swapping. The story reportedly takes inspiration from Torikaebaya Monogatari, a 12th-century tale where two siblings display the mannerisms of the opposite sex.
For more on Funimation, check out our interview with executive vice president and chief operating officer of Funimation, Mike Du Bois, and Kun Gao, founder and general manager of Crunchyroll, discussing the latest anime industry shake-up: a collaboration between the two platforms that promises to make anime more accessible to Western audiences than ever before.
