Film competed against Chicken Run: The Dawn of the Nugget, Elemental, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
© 2023 Studio Ghibli
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts awarded the BAFTA Award for Animated Film to Hayao Miyazaki‘s latest feature film The Boy and the Heron (Kimi-tachi wa Dō Ikiru ka) on Sunday. The film was competing against Chicken Run: The Dawn of the Nugget, Elemental, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The Boy and the Heron is the first anime film to win the award, or to be nominated for it, since it was first introduced in 2006.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie was in the longlist for the Animated Film category, but it was not nominated.
Hayao Miyazaki won the Annie award for Best Storyboarding for a feature film with The Boy and the Heron, and the film’s animation director Takeshi Honda won the award for Best Character Animation for a feature film during the Annie Awards on Saturday.
The Boy and the Heron won the Best Motion Picture – Animated category at the 81st Golden Globes Awards in January. The Alliance of Women Film Journalists gave it the Best Animated Film award in its EDA Awards on December 31. The 78th Mainichi Film Awards announced ahead of its February 14 ceremony that the film will receive the Noburou Oofuji Award, which honors animated works that offer new forms of creative expression. The film also received nominations from the Annie Awards (for animated feature, directing, and writing) and the British Academy Film Awards (for animated film).
The film opened in Japan on July 14, and sold 1.003 million tickets and earned about US$13.2 million in its first three days in Japan. The film sold 1.353 million tickets and earned 2.149 billion yen (about US$15.53 million) in its Friday-Monday long weekend (July 17 was the Marine Day holiday in Japan). It is the #71 highest-grossing film ever in Japan, and the third highest-grossing domestic film in Japan in 2023 with an 8.66 billion yen (about US$61.4 million) gross.
The film ranked at #1 in its opening weekend in the U.S. box office, with an earning of US$12,836,313 in its first three days. Variety reported that the film is the “first original anime production” to top the U.S. box office.
Source: Deadline (Nancy Tartaglione)
