This past weekend
, Your Name? was at the top of the Japanese box office for a ninth week in a row. Here in the US, confirmation was just released that Funimation has licensed the film for an Academy-Award qualifying run in theaters. While we don't have an exact release date just yet, it was announced that the film will hit theaters before the end of 2016. Previously, the film was screened in Los Angeles on July 3 at Anime Expo. To date, the film as earned about $158 million at the box office and should surpass $200 million before finishing its run in theaters.
The film is about a teen boy and girl who swap bodies after sharing similar dreams. With his latest release, comparisons between Shinkai and Hayao Miyazaki continue to grow even louder. As such, there was a recent rumor that Shinkai was in line to join Studio Ghibli but the
5 Centimeters Per Second director quickly debunked that notion.
Following its run in theaters, Funimation is expected to quickly make the film ready for a digital roll out.
Mitsuha is a high school girl living in a rural mountainous town who yearns to live in Tokyo. Taki is a high school boy whose home is in the capital. Mitsuha has a dream in which she is a boy living in Tokyo, while Taki has a dream in which he has become a girl in a town deep in the mountains. Mitsuha and Taki keep having these strange dreams and they come to realize that they have switched bodies.