Life After The Oscars: ‘The Boy And The Heron’ Will Head To Max After U.S., Japan Theatrical Re-Releases
Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron will get a second go-round in U.S. and Japanese cinemas after winning this year’s animated feature Oscar over the weekend.
GKIDS, Ghibli’s North American distributor, tweeted that The Boy and the Heron will return to North American theaters for a “celebratory re-release” soon. Heron is GKIDS’s biggest release ever by any metric we can think of. It’s the highest-grossing film in GKIDS history and marks the first time, after 13 nominations, that a film distributed by the company has won the animated feature Oscar.
Interestingly, Toho, the film’s Japanese distributor, will be releasing the English-dubbed version, which features A-listers such as Christian Bale, Dave Bautista, Gemma Chan, Willem Dafoe, Karen Fukuhara, Mark Hamill, Robert Pattinson, and Florence Pugh. In Japan, the film will start screening again on March 20.
The Boy and the Heron has also nailed down its U.S. streaming future after Warner Bros. Discovery extended a previous streaming deal with producer Studio Ghibli. Max, and HBO Max before its name change, has been the streaming home to Ghibli’s full catalog since 2020.
Other Ghibli films that will continue to be streamable on Max include:
- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
- Castle in the Sky (1986)
- My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
- Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
- Only Yesterday (1991)
- Porco Rosso (1992)
- Ocean Waves (1993)
- Pom Poko (1994)
- Whisper of the Heart (1995)
- Princess Mononoke (1997)
- My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999)
- Spirited Away (2001)
- The Cat Returns (2002)
- Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)
- Tales from Earthsea (2006)
- Ponyo (2008)
- The Secret World of Arrietty (2010)
- From Up on Poppy Hill (2011)
- The Wind Rises (2013)
- The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013)
- When Marnie Was There (2014)
- Earwig and the Witch (2020)
In a release, WBD vp of content acquisitions Elizabeth Bannan Atcheson said:
Our subscribers are always looking for unique stories, and we are happy to continue to offer these award-winning, critically acclaimed films and to add ‘The Boy and the Heron’ to our deep and rich Max content offering.