GKIDS announced on Tuesday that it and Shout! Studios will release Mamoru Hosoda‘s Summer Wars and Wolf Children anime films on 4K UHD Steelbooks on April 1 and August 5, respectively. Both films will also get updated Blu-ray Disc and digital download releases on the same days.
© 2012 “Wolf Children” Film Partners
GKIDS acquired the North American distribution rights to Hosoda’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, Wolf Children, and The Boy and The Beast films last March. Summer Wars and Wolf Children entered GKIDS‘ catalog immediately, while The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and The Boy and The Beast enter the catalog this year. The films are planned for new theatrical and home video releases.
GKIDS has previously released Hosoda’s later two films Mirai and BELLE, and also previously handled the theatrical release of Summer Wars in the United States.
Funimation previously released Summer Wars and Wolf Children on DVD and Blu-ray Disc.
© 2009 SUMMERWARS FILM PARTNERS
Summer Wars centers on timid eleventh-grader and math genius Kenji Koiso, who is asked by older student and secret crush Natsuki to come with her to her family’s Nagano home for a summer job. Natsuki’s family, the Jinnouchi clan, dates back to the Muromachi era, and they’ve all come together to celebrate the 90th birthday of the spunky matriarch of the family, Sakae. That’s when Kenji discovers his “summer job” is to pretend to be Natsuki’s fiancé and dance with her at the birthday celebration. As Kenji attempts to keep up with Natsuki’s act around her family, he receives a strange math problem on his cell phone which, being a math genius, he can’t resist solving. As it turns out, the solution to the mysterious equation causes a hijacking of the social networking site through which most of the world’s social and business traffic flows.
The original movie opened in Japan in July 2009.
Funimation describes 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.
Raising her little wild things was an adventure. It left Hana bruised, scratched, exhausted, and joyously overwhelmed as her pups grew stronger and wandered further every day. This is a mother’s journey. Teach your children to chase their dreams – and smile through the tears as they disappear into the world in search of who they will become. Hana wasn’t always a mother, but it was always what she was meant to be.
Hosoda established Studio Chizu in 2011 to produce Wolf Children, and the film debuted the following year.
Studio Chizu and director Hosoda (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, Wolf Children, The Boy and The Beast, Mirai) are working on a new anime film titled Scarlet (Hateshi naki Scarlet in Japanese, literally “Scarlet Without Limits”) for release in winter 2025. This will be the first new work for Hosoda in four years, since BELLE.
Source: Press release
