Disney revealed release plans today for Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises at the Toronto International Film Festival. Here are the dates:
The film is slated for limited release in North American theaters on Feb. 21, 2014, and expanded release on Feb. 28, 2014, under the Touchstone Pictures banner. The Wind Rises will also open for Academy Award qualification engagements in New York and Los Angeles Nov. 8-14, 2013, showcasing the original film in Japanese with English subtitles.
It would be safe to assume that the consumer theatrical release will be dubbed in English, even though the Oscar-qualification screenings will be English-subtitled, as pointed out in the press announcement.
While the new Hayao Miyazaki film, Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises) will not be released in American theaters until sometime next year, attendees of the Venice International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and New York Film Festival will get an opportunity to experience the film much sooner.
Kaze Tachinu, which opened in Japan on July 20th, is based on the life of Jiro Horikoshi, a World War II designer of Zero fighters, including the Mitsubishi A6M Zero which was used by the imperial Japanese navy for kamikaze missions and during the Pearl Harbor bombing.
“My wife and staff would ask me, ‘Why make a story about a man who made weapons of war?” Miyazaki told Japan’s Cut magazine in 2011. “And I thought they were right. But one day, I heard that Horikoshi had once murmured, ‘All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful.’ And then I knew I’d found my subject… Horikoshi was the most gifted man of his time in Japan. He wasn’t thinking about weapons… Really all he desired was to make exquisite planes.”
According to the South China Morning Post, this choice of subject matter, which lead to some veiled jabs at Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has put Miyazaki in the crosshairs of conservative nationalists. He has also found himself defending the film to South Koreans offended of his glorification of a man so closely connected to a Japanese military that used forced laborers from the Korean peninsula. And, the Japan Society for Tobacco Control, has taken issue with the depictions of smoking presented in the film, especially in a scene where the lead character smokes a cigarette while sitting with his wife, who is bedridden and suffering from tuberculosis.
Despite the controversy (or perhaps because of it), Kaze Tachinu was Japan’s biggest opening of the year at ¥960M ($9M US) in its first two days, and has stayed at number for four consecutive weekends with a total box office gross of ¥7.2B ($74.1M US). em>Kaze Tachinu
will screen in Venice from August 31-September 2, and at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 12 and 15. The film’s screening dates for the New York Film Festival haven’t been set yet.
In spite of a soft third-place opening in the United States, Sony’s Smurfs 2, directed by Raja Gosnell, managed to become the number one film globally last weekend. The film opened with just $17.5 million in U.S. theaters, but made up for it with $52.5 mil in over forty international markets. Even with the strong overseas opening, the film is unlikely to top the original Smurfs worldwide gross of $563.7 mil.
Illumination’s juggernaut Despicable Me 2 scored $10.1 mil in its fifth U.S. weekend, boosting its domestic cume to $326.4 mil. It also added $13.8 mil internationally, and after last weekend, its global gross is $716.7 mil. It is the third highest-grossing movie of the year so far, trailing only Iron Man 3 and Fast & Furious 6. Disney’s Monsters University earned $1.4 mil domestically and $11.4 mil internationally. Its global total is $613.5 million through last weekend.
In Japan, Hayao Miyazaki’s Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises) held onto the top spot in its third week of release. The film grossed $5.6 mil from 454 screens, and has a Japanese box office total of $44.3 mil.
As reported by Anime News Network, documentary filmmaker Mami Sunada (Ending Note: Death of a Japanese Salaryman) is nearing completion on the Studio Ghibli documentary Kingdom of Dreams and Madness. The film follows studio producer Toshio Suzuki, and directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies) as they work on two upcoming Studio Ghibli films, Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises) and Kaguya-hime no Monogatori (The Tale of Princess Kaguya).
When discussing her film’s title, Sunada explains: “I think that having a dream entails having a bit of madness, no matter what the profession. There are times when you will go to extremes, and times when you are feared by others for that.”
The Wind Rises, which is the first Miyazaki directed film in five years, debuts this weekend in Japan. Centering on Zero fighter designer Jiro Horikoshi, it is inspired by a manga Miyazaki created for Gekkan Model Graphics magazine and based on the novel of the same name by Tatsuo Hori. The Tale of Princess Kaguya, directed by Takahata is an adaptation of the Japanese folk story, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Originally slated to premiere simultaneously with The Wind Rises, Kaguya’s release date was postponed due to production snags, and as a result, Sunada continues to film in the studio to cover the extended production. Sunada’s documentary will premiere this fall in Japan.
