Anime fans in North America and other territories can look forward to seeing the animated feature film The Sky Crawlers, thanks to Sony. Daily Variety reports that Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group has acquired distribution rights to this latest directorial effort from Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) for the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand.
The Sky Crawlers is based on Hiroshi Mori’s popular novel series, first published in 2001. Produced by Nippon TV and animated by Production I.G., the film revolves around two teenagers caught in an aerial war in a parallel universe. Mori felt that this story arc was the most difficult of his works to adapt and had given his consent to the making of the animated movie after learning of Oshii’s involvement as director. The screenplay was penned by Chihiro Ito, and the production design is the work of Tetsuya Nishio, who worked on several Naruto movies and the Ghost in the Shell series.
Sony, which has released such recent anime favorites as Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress and Paprika under its Sony Pictures Classics label, picked up Sky Crawlers from Production I.G. after its North American premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. The film’s trailer can be found at http://sky.crawlers.jp/index.html.
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