Spirited Away to Finally Get Theatrical Release in China

Yahoo! News reported on Monday that Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away anime film will, at last, have a theatrical release in China, 18 years after its 2001 debut in Japan. Chinese company Sina announced the screening earlier this month with a new poster for the film (seen below).

My Neighbor Totoro opened theatrically in China last December as the first Studio Ghibli film to receive a theatrical release in the country. The screening earned a total of 173 million yuan (about US$25.75 million) in China, and was the second-highest earning Japanese film in China in 2018. However, it had earned only 159 million yuan (about US$23.67 million) when 2018 ended. Before the film’s theatrical screening, Studio Ghibli said that it planned to release other films in China if My Neighbor Totoro was successful.

Spirited Away was previously the highest-grossing anime film worldwide until January 2017, when Makoto Shinkai’s your name. surpassed the record. The film remains the only non-English-language title to win the Academy Awards’ Best Animated Feature award, which it earned in 2003.