GKIDS to Issue New 4K Home Entertainment Releases of Film Catalog of Renowned, Oscar®-Nominated Director Mamoru Hosoda

NEW YORK (January 27, 2025) – GKIDS, the Academy Award®-winning distributor of artist-driven and award-winning animation from around the world, announced today that beginning in 2025, it will issue in partnership with Shout! Studios all-new 4K UHD releases of award-winning director Mamoru Hosoda's early film catalog.

The first titles in the series to receive a reissue are Oscar-nominated director Mamoru Hosoda's seminal 2009 feature Summer Wars, and critically lauded 2012 hit Wolf Children. The new home entertainment releases will be presented with brand new artwork in a 4K UHD SteelBook® version, a standard Blu-ray™ issue, and on digital download-to-own platforms. New issues for Summer Wars will be released on April 1, 2025, and Wolf Children on August 5, 2025. Both titles are now available for preorder.

Summer Wars Pre-Order: gkids.com/films/summer-wars

Wolf Children Pre-Order: gkids.com/films/wolf-children

Bonus Features - Summer Wars
● Interviews with the Original Cast - Ryūnosuke Kamiki (Kenji Koiso)
● Interviews with the Original Cast - Nanami Sakuraba (Natsuki Shinohara)
● Interviews with the Original Cast - Mitsuki Tanimura (Kazuma Ikezawa)
● Interviews with the Original Cast - Ayumu Saitô (Wabisuke Jinnouchi)
● Interviews with the Original Cast - Sumiko Fuji (Sakae Jinnouchi)
● Interview with Mamoru Hosoda
● Teasers & Trailers

Last year, GKIDS announced it had acquired the North American distribution rights to the Mamoru Hosoda catalog of films. GKIDS previously released the Academy Award®- and Golden Globe-nominated Mirai (2018), and the critically lauded BELLE (2021), which became Hosoda's highest grossing film to date in North America. The director Mamoru Hosoda's six features have all been nominated for, and five have been awarded, the Japan Academy Prize for “Animation of the Year.” Hosoda remains the only Japanese animation director outside of the famed Studio Ghibli to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature.

www.HosodaCollection.com

About GKIDS
GKIDS is the Academy Award-winning producer and distributor of artist-driven and award-winning animation from around the world. After an astounding 13 Best Animated Feature nominations, the company took home the Oscar in 2024 for Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's acclaimed feature, The Boy and the Heron. The company's previous nominations include The Secret of Kells in 2010, A Cat in Paris and Chico & Rita in 2012, Ernest & Celestine in 2014, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya and Song of the Sea in 2015, Boy and the World and When Marnie Was There in 2016, My Life as a Zucchini in 2017, The Breadwinner in 2018, Mirai in 2019, Wolfwalkers in 2021, and The Boy and the Heron in 2024. For more than a decade, GKIDS' influence on cinema has redefined the perception of animation as an artistic medium on par with live-action film through its stewardship of the Studio Ghibli catalog and by introducing American audiences to the critically-acclaimed films of other master filmmakers from around the world such as Mamoru Hosoda (Mirai, BELLE), Tomm Moore (The Secret of Kells, Wolfwalkers), Benjamin Renner (Ernest & Celestine), Makoto Shinkai (Weathering With You), Nora Twomey (The Breadwinner), Alberto Vázquez (Unicorn Wars) and Masaaki Yuasa (INU-OH, The Night is Short Walk On, Girl), among countless others. Also, GKIDS is the founder and host of ANIMATION IS FILM, the annual LA-based film festival which embraces the highest aspirations of animation as a cinematic art form, and is a vocal advocate for filmmakers who push the boundaries of the medium to its fullest range of artistic expressions. www.gkids.com

About Studio Chizu
Studio Chizu is Director Mamoru Hosoda's headquarters that was established during the production of Wolf Children. Director Hosoda gave the studio its name, Chizu ("map" in Japanese).
The main characters in Hosoda films possess a vitality and life force for choosing and cultivating a future of one's own free will. Studio Chizu's logo manifests that exuberance and energy. Director Hosoda's philosophy of movies is that "they should serve the public like a park where many people gather," and the logo uses "minchotai," a font favored by many newspapers and books. Studio Chizu is a place that embraces Director Hosoda's thoughts and philosophies on movies and is his works themselves. We at Studio Chizu will keep such thoughts and philosophies in mind and remain sharp and resolute in our production of animation films that children and adults can enjoy together.

About Shout! Studios
Shout! Studios is a multiplatform media company specializing in film and TV distribution, development, and production. The company has evolved with the changing entertainment landscape to excel in all forms of content distribution, including theatrical, digital streaming, broadcast and in-flight licensing, physical media, and more. Shout! Studios owns and manages a large portfolio of feature films, series, animation, and documentaries. The company's creative acquisition mandate has established it as a leading independent distributor, with partners and properties including Aardman Animations (Wallace and Gromit, Shaun The Sheep), GKIDS and Studio Ghibli (including the latest Academy Award® -winning masterpiece from Miyazaki, The Boy and the Heron), LAIKA Studios (Coraline, ParaNorman), as well as Mystery Science Theater 3000 (in partnership with creator Joel Hodgson), alongside many others. Shout! Kids focuses on live-action and animated kids and family properties plus anime, and the company releases genre and horror films and television shows under the Scream Factory imprint. Shout! Studios also operates the acclaimed streaming service Shout! TV and its family of FAST channels. The company produces, acquires, and distributes new films, including Shout! Studios' original Old Henry (Tim Blake Nelson), Linoleum (Jim Gaffigan, Rhea Seehorn), What's Love Got To Do With It (Lily James, Emma Thompson, Shazad Latif), The Kill Room (Uma Thurman, Joe Manganiello, Samuel L. Jackson), Drugstore June (Esther Povitsky), and the Viggo Mortensen-directed western The Dead Don't Hurt (Vicky Krieps, Viggo Mortensen). Shout! Studios is based in Los Angeles, California. For more on Shout! Studios, visit ShoutStudios.com