Makoto Shinkai's animation masterpiece "Kimi no Na Wa" is eyeing an Oscar nomination and preparing to have a theatrical run in North America before the end of the year.
According to Variety, the Japanese box office hit film, also known as "Your Name", is heading to North America for release and famous American entertainment and anime licensing company FUNimation has obtained U.S. rights to the animation film. It plans to open the film in 85 countries and regions.
The film has topped the Japanese chart for nine consecutive weekends and now stands on a cumulative total of 16.41 billion yen or $157 million. This makes it the fourth highest-grossing anime film in Japan, the fifth highest grossing Japanese film in the country, and the ninth highest grossing film of all time in Japan.
Anime News Network said it has surpassed the box office total of Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki's "Ponyo" anime film (which earned 15.5. billion yen) and James Cameron's "Avatar" film (which earned 15.6 billion yen).
FUNimation also seeks to release "Your Name" at Los Angeles' Laemmle Music Hall for a one-week Oscar qualifiying run from December 2 to 8, with a wider theatrical release planned for the first quarter of 2017. The film world premiered at the Anime Expo in Los Angeles in July as part of a Shinkai retrospective, and has since launched a successful international festival run, starting with San Sebastian in September.
The film is about a teen boy and girl who exchanges sexes in their dreams. The audiences loved it not only because of its contemporary story, but also for the film's finely detailed portrayal of the Japanese urban landscape. These features have tagged Shinkai as the successor of the partially retired Hayao Miyazaki.
However, the "Kimi no Na wa" director called the comparison an overestimation, "being a self-confessed Miyazaki fan himself."
"I myself am very influenced by Hayao Miyazaki, but his works have an incomparable richness that is not the same 'animation' as my animation," Shinkai said. "I certainly won't create such wonderful works in my future. However, I would like to deliver works that have a different place with audiences than the place of Hayao Miyazaki's films."
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