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Spain's San Sebastian to Show Mamoru Hosoda's The Boy and the Beast
posted on by Karen Ressler
Spain's San Sebastian International Film Festival announced on Friday that Mamoru Hosoda's The Boy and The Beast will compete in the official selection for the Golden Shell award at the September 18-26 event.
While other animated films have played at the festival, this marks the first time an animated film has played in competition for the Golden Shell award.
The festival has thus far announced 16 other titles, foreign and domestic, to compete in the official selection.
The story of The Boy and The Beast is set in the human realm (Tokyo's Shibuya ward) and the bakemono realm ("Jūtengai"). In these two worlds that must not intersect, there lives a lonely boy (Aoi Miyazaki, Shōta Sometani) and a lonely bakemono (Kōji Yakusho). One day, the boy gets lost in the bakemono world, becomes the disciple of the bakemono Kumatetsu, and is renamed Kyūta.
Hosoda (Summer Wars, Wolf Children) created and scripted the movie. The film is Hosoda's first film since 2012, when his relatively new animation movie company Studio Chizu released Wolf Children as its first project. Masakatsu Takagi (Wolf Children) scored the soundtrack.
Funimation licensed the American rights to the film, and plans to release the film in select theaters later this year and nationwide in early 2016. Theatrical screenings have also been set for France, and the major French movie studio Gaumont will handle international sales outside Asia. Funimation is working with Gaumont International to release the film.
Since debuting at #1 in Japanese theaters on July 11, the film has sold over 3 million tickets to earn over 3.8 billion yen (about US$30.5 million).
Source: Variety
