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2nd Gundam Hathaway Film's Teaser Announces Staff, Title, Winter Debut
posted on by Egan Loo
The official website for the Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway (Kidō Senshi Gundam: Senkō no Hathaway) anime project posted a teaser for the second film on Thursday. The teaser announces the film's staff, Kidō Senshi Gundam: Senkō no Hathaway - Circe no Majo (Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe, or literally, "The Witch of Circe") title, and winter opening. (The video's description says in Japanese that the film will open "this winter," while the video's English text says it will open "next winter.")
The main cast and most of the staff are returning from the first film, but Yuichi Kuboki is joining Takako Suzuki as a color key artist. Yoshinori Sayama (Macross Plus, Cowboy Bebop, Mobile Suit Gundam UC) is credited for display designs after contributing to the first film. Yoshihisa Ōyama is the new film's compositing director of photography with Manabu Kamitōno directing the visual effects.
Director Shukou Murase had teased during the first film's 4K UHD Blu-ray Disc release event in December 2021 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 haf been difficult to cover the area because of COVID-19, so the director had been using a flight simulator to fly around the sky there.
The film project will be a trilogy, and the second part had 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 would have some differences from Yoshiyuki Tomino's original novel series.
The first film opened in Japan on June 11, 2021, 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.
The first Hathaway 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. It eventually became 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, 2021. (The Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX -Beginning- anime film has since surpassed its total.)
Netflix U.S. began exclusively streaming the first film on July 1, 2021.
Update: English version of the teaser added. Thanks, Gamlin.
Source: Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway anime's website
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