Anime master Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron tops box office in US, Canada

For the first time in Hayao Miyazaki’s decades-spanning career, the 82-year-old Japanese anime master is No 1 at the North American box office. Miyazaki’s latest enchantment, The Boy and the Heron, debuted with US$12.8 million, according to studio estimates.

The film, which is playing in both subtitled and dubbed versions, is also the first fully foreign production to lead the North American box office this year.

The director’s previous best performer was his last film, 2013’s The Wind Rises, which grossed US$5.2 million in its domestic run.

“It’s really a resounding statement for what animation can be,” said Eric Beckman, founder and chief executive of GKIDS, the North American distributor for Studio Ghibli films. “American audiences have been ready for a lot more than what they’ve been getting, and I think this really points to that.”

The Boy and the Heron for years was expected to be Miyazaki’s swan song. But just as it was making its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, Junichi Nishioka, Studio Ghibli vice-president, said the previously retired Miyazaki had begun working towards another film.

The Boy and the Heron has been hailed as one of the best films of 2023. The film, featuring an English dub voice cast including Robert Pattinson, Christian Bale, Dave Bautista and Mark Hamill, follows a boy who, after his mother dies during World War II, is led by a mysterious heron to a portal that takes him to a fantastical realm.

In Japan, its title translates to How Do You Live?

The Boy and the Heron: Hayao Miyazaki goes out on a high

The Boy and the Heron earlier collected US$56 million in Japan despite zero promotion. Studio Ghibli opted to release the film without production stills, trailers, ads or billboards.

This year, all 10 of Miyazaki’s films with Ghibli were re-released in cinemas by GKIDS, which was founded in 2008 as a way to bring ambitious animation to wider audiences.

“Working on a Hayao Miyazaki film is a huge honour but also kind of terrifying,” Beckman said. “We’re really just trying to do justice to the film.”