While Japan regurlarly submits anime films for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film,
Weathering With You will be the first anime film submitted for the Best International Featuer Film (formerly known as the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film) Oscar since 1998, when Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Monoke was submitted for cosideration. However,
Monoke ultimately did not receive enough votes from the Academy to be successfully nominated and was not on the official ballot. Will Shinkai succeed where Miyazaki failed?
It's also likely that
Weathering With You will appear in both the Best Animated Feature Film and Best International Feature Film, giving the pic a chance at taking home 2 Oscars.
To date,
Weathering With You has grossed over $101M USD in Japan alone. To date, the film
is the second highest-grossing film in Japan, after Disney's live-action
Aladdin remake ($111M USD).
GKids has licensed the film for North American release. A very small, awards-qualifying run will take place later this year, before a wider release occurrs in early-2020.
The next Academy Awards ceremony will take place on February 9, 2020.
The summer of his high school freshman year, Hodaka runs away from his remote island home to Tokyo, and quickly finds himself pushed to his financial and personal limits. The weather is unusually gloomy and rainy every day, as if to suggest his future. He lives his days in isolation, but finally finds work as a writer for a mysterious occult magazine. Then one day, Hodaka meets Hina on a busy street corner. This bright and strongwilled girl possesses a strange and wonderful ability: the power to stop the rain and clear the sky...