1905 Film Network News Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's new film "The Boy and the Heron" landed in North America last Friday. Over the course of three days in its opening weekend, the film earned $12.8 million. This achievement makes the film the first original Japanese animated film to reach the top of the North American box office, and it is also the best opening result in North America in Ghibli film history.
On its release day, the film grossed $5.5 million. Complementing the box office figures is the film's evaluation reputation. The film currently has a 96% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an MTC** score of a rare 92, surpassing the 88 points of "Poor Things". CinemaScore received an A- audience score, and the box office was full of momentum. Judging from such a performance, the film can be regarded as a double harvest of word-of-mouth and box office.
The film is inspired by the work of the same name published in 1937 by Genzaburo Yoshino, which tells the story of a 15-year-old boy "Little Copernicus", inspired and guided by his uncle who graduated from college, to explore topics such as friendship, wealth and poverty, discrimination, bullying, people and society, and courage, so as to clarify "the value of human beings". Hayao Miyazaki was deeply moved and inspired after reading the original**, which led to the creation of a new original work. Allegedly, the anime is not a direct adaptation of the original, but a new "grandiose, fantastical" original. Studio Ghibli President Koji Hoshino said, "This is the studio's biggest production to date."
Hayao Miyazaki, who announced his retirement after the premiere of "The Wind Rises" in 2013, decided to make a comeback because he wanted to leave a work for his grandson, according to Toshio Suzuki: "Miyazaki's film was made for his grandson." With this movie, he wanted to tell his grandson, 'Grandpa is about to go to another world, but he left you this movie. ’