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Gundam: Hathaway Producer: 2nd Film May Not Open Before 2024
posted on by Alex Mateo
Shukou Murase, the director of the Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway (Kidō Senshi Gundam: Senkō no Hathaway) anime project teased during the first film's 4K UHD Blu-ray Disc release event on Thursday that the second film may not open before 2024, the year of the next Summer Olympic Games, at least. The film's producer Naohiro Ogata revealed that the next stage of the film series is Australia, but it has been difficult to cover the area because of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19), so the director has been using a flight simulator to fly around the sky there.
The film project will be a trilogy, and the second part has a working title of Kidō Senshi Gundam: Senkō no Hathaway: San of Bright. The film's producer Ogata elaborated that the Japanese katakana characters "San" (サン) can be read as "sun" or "son." The film's main character Hathaway Noa is the son of the character Bright Noa. Ogata stated the second part will have some differences from Yoshiyuki Tomino's original novel series.
The film is the first Gundam film since 1988's Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack to top the 1 billion yen mark. The film has earned a cumulative total of 2,209,628,200 yen (about US$19.57 million) in the Japanese box office as of October 10.
The film sold 259,074 tickets for 523,943,800 yen (about US$4.77 million) in its first three days at the box office. It ranked at #3 (in terms of tickets sold) in its opening weekend.
The film opened in Japan on June 11, after previously being delayed three times. The movie was originally slated to open in Japan in July 2020, but was delayed due to COVID-19. The film was delayed in April from May 7 to May 21, and was then delayed again due to the extended state of emergency declared in Japan.
Netflix U.S. began exclusively streaming the film on July 1.
Source: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web
