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Austin's Fantastic Fest to Show Hosoda's The Boy and the Beast Film
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
The Fantastic Fest film festival announced on Wednesday that it will screen the U.S. premiere of Mamoru Hosoda's The Boy and The Beast (Bakemono no Ko) film.
The story of The Boy and The Beast is set in the human realm (Tokyo's Shibuya ward) and the bakemono realm ("Jūtengai"). In these two worlds that must not intersect, there lives a lonely boy and a lonely bakemono. One day, the boy gets lost in the bakemono world, becomes the disciple of the bakemono Kumatetsu, and is renamed Kyūta.
The film opened in Japan on July 11, and debuted at #1 in the Japanese box-office in its opening weekend and earned 667,035,100 yen (about US$5.4 million) in its first two days. It eventually surpassed the total box office earnings of Hosoda's previous film, Wolf Children. The film has earned 5 billion yen (about US$42 million) as of August 24.
The film stars:
Kōji Yakusho as Kumatetsu, a bear-like being who acts as a teacher to the human Kyūta
Aoi Miyazaki as child Kyūta
Shōta Sometani as adolescent Kyūta
Suzu Hirose in her debut voice-acting role as Kaede, a high school student Kyūta meets
Hosoda (Summer Wars, Wolf Children) created and scripted the movie. The film is Hosoda's first film since 2012, when his relatively new animation movie company Studio Chizu released Wolf Children as its first project. Masakatsu Takagi (Wolf Children) is scoring the soundtrack. Funimation licensed the American rights to the film, and plans to release the film nationwide in early 2016. Theatrical screenings have also been set for France, and the major French movie studio Gaumont will handle international sales outside Asia. Funimation is working with Gaumont International to release the film.
Madman Entertainment previously streamed an English-subtitled second trailer for the film.
Fantastic Fest is also screening Eiichi Yamamoto's 1973 experimental anime film Belladonna of Sadness, the live-action Assassination Classroom film, and Takashi Miike's Yakuza Apocalypse live-action film.
This year's Fantastic Fest film festival will take place at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas from September 24 to October 1.
