News

Spirited Away Gets 1st Theatrical Release in China

Yahoo! News reported on Monday that Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away anime film will have a theatrical release in China, 18 years after its 2001 debut in Japan. Chinese company Sina announced the screening earlier this month with a new poster for the film (seen below).

My Neighbor Totoro opened theatrically in China last December as the first Studio Ghibli film to receive a theatrical release in the country. The screening earned a total of 173 million yuan (about US$25.75 million) in China, and was the second-highest earning Japanese film in China in 2018. However, it had earned only 159 million yuan (about US$23.67 million) when 2018 ended. Before the film's theatrical screening, Studio Ghibli said that it planned to release other films in China if My Neighbor Totoro was successful.

Spirited Away was previously the highest-grossing anime film worldwide until January 2017, when Makoto Shinkai's your name. surpassed the record. The film remains the only non-English-language title to win the Academy Awards' Best Animated Feature award, which it earned in 2003.

GKIDS and Fathom Events will screen the film again in October as part of this year's "Studio Ghibli Fest 2019" screenings. The companies previously screened the film in 2016, 2017, and 2018. Walt Disney Pictures previously released the film on DVD and Blu-ray Disc, and GKIDS re-released the film on Blu-ray Disc in October 2017. The film premiered in North America in 2002.

Sources: Yahoo! News, The Hollywood Reporter (Gavin J. Blair), Eiga Natalie