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After an impressive box office run at the end of 2023 and winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Film earlier this year, Hayao Miyazaki‘s “The Boy and the Heron” is coming to streaming.
The epic animated film — starring Robert Pattinson, Florence Pugh and Willem Dafoe (in the English dubbed version) — is available to rent and purchase digitally in 4K Ultra HD on Prime Video and Apple TV starting on Tuesday, June 25.
Meanwhile, the Miyazaki film gets a limited-edition Steelbook release, as well as 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray and DVD combo releases on Tuesday, July 9.
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‘The Boy and the Heron’
All releases of “The Boy and the Heron” come in the original Japanese with English subtitles, or in an English-language version, which also features a voice cast of Luca Padovan, Christian Bale, Dave Bautista, Gemma Chan, Willem Dafoe, Karen Fukuhara, Mark Hamill and others.
“The Boy and the Heron” follows Mahito Maki, a boy who’s coping with the loss of his mother after a fire engulfs his town during World War II. Although he’s forced to move to the countryside of Japan with his father and his new stepmother, he gets trapped in a scary, yet beautiful, fantasy world after following a mysterious and chaotic heron into the ruins of an old castle. Mahito must try to make it home safely, while trying to reconcile his mother’s tragic death.
In addition to its big worldwide box office haul of $173.2 million, the animated film was also met with widespread acclaim when it was released back in Dec. 2023. In his film review, Variety film critic Peter DeBruge describes the film as, “full of visual ideas, from a swarm of frogs to the busybody maid who becomes a warrior pirate on the other side, but it mostly reminds how familiar our world already is with the one Miyazaki’s been weaving all these years.”
Rent or purchase “The Boy and the Heron” digitally beginning on Tuesday, June 25, and pre-order the film in a limited-edition Steelbook, on 4K Ultra HD, or Blu-ray or DVD combo pack for release on Tuesday, July 9.
Source Agencies
