News

Anime Limited Acquires Three Mamoru Hosoda Films

Screen International reports that Anime Limited and Germany's Plaion Pictures have acquired UK, France, Italy and Germany rights to three films directed by Mamoru Hosoda: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (pictured right), Summer Wars and Wolf Children. (Plaion Pictures also acquired The Boy and The Beast for Germany and Italy.)

Anime Limited and Plaion Pictures had already acquired the Hosoda films Mirai and BELLE.

According to Screen International, "The companies are working on a ‘World of Mamoru Hosoda’ theatrical season, releasing one of the newly-acquired films every month in cinemas, followed shortly by a home entertainment release. A date for the season is yet to be confirmed."

Funimation previously described The Girl Who Leapt Through Time:

"After waking up late, flunking her pop quiz, embarrassing herself on numerous occasions, and starting a fire in her home economics class, high school student Makoto Konno figures she's just having one of those days. And just when she thinks she's made it through, the brakes on her bike malfunction putting her on a collision course with a speeding train. The life-ending accident would have been the perfect end to the worst day ever, but the strangest thing happens—she leaps backwards in time."

Hosoda and Madhouse Studios' film based on Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1967 novel opened in Japan in 2006.

Funimation also previously described Summer Wars:

"Kenji is your typical teenage misfit. He's good at math, bad with girls, and spends most of his time hanging out in the all-powerful, online community known as OZ. His second life is the only life he has - until the girl of his dreams, Natsuki, hijacks him for a starring role as a fake fiance at her family reunion. Things only get stranger from there. A late-night email containing a cryptic mathematic riddle leads to the unleashing of a rogue AI intent on using the virtual word of OZ to destroy the real world, literally. As Armageddon looms on the horizon, Kenji and his new "family" set aside their differences and band together to save the worlds they inhabit."

Hosoda and Madhouse Studios' original movie opened in Japan in July 2009.

Funimation has also previously described Wolf Children:

"Hana was a student before she was a mother. She was bright and pretty, and her future held endless possibilities. Then she met a man, who turned out to be a wolf, and together they built a family. Hana loved her mate fiercely, but fate took him from her, leaving her alone with two unusual kids she didn't know how to raise. Frightened of being discovered, Hana and her Wolf Children fled to the countryside to build a new life."

Hosoda established Studio Chizu in 2011 to produce Wolf Children, and the film debuted the following year.