Crunchyroll to distribute Shinkai’s next project
August 12, 2026



Crunchyroll has acquired the worldwide distribution rights (excluding Asia, with the exception of India) to the next feature film from acclaimed filmmaker Makoto Shinkai, with Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures Entertainment to co-distribute. The project marks the latest highly anticipated release from Shinkai, one of the most successful and influential animation directors working today.

Most recently, Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures previously partnered on the global distribution of Shinkai’s Suzume (2023), which grossed over $300 million worldwide and received critical acclaim, including a Golden Globe nomination. Suzume premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival—the first anime feature to do so in decades—further cementing Shinkai’s status as a globally recognised auteur.


Shinkai’s prior works – including Your Name. and Weathering With You – have achieved both major commercial success and international recognition, helping to redefine the global reach of Japanese animation. Your Name. (2016) became a worldwide phenomenon and one of the highest-grossing anime films of all time, while Weathering With You (2019) was Japan’s official submission for the Academy Awards® for Best International Feature Film.

Makoto Shinkai was born in Nagano Prefecture in 1973. In 2002 he debuted his self-produced short-film Voices of a Distant Star, which won many awards starting with the Tokyo International Anime Fair 21. In 2004 he created his first full-length movie The Place Promised in Our Early Days to great acclaim, which went on to win Best Animated Film at the 59th Mainichi Film Concours. In 2007 he released 5 Centimeters Per Second which won Best Animated Feature Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, as well as the Lancia Platinum Grand Prize at Italy’s Future Film Festival. In 2011 Children Who Chase Lost Voices was released in theaters nationwide and presented internationally as a work unlike the world had ever seen before, winning the ‘Golden Monkey King’ Award at the 8th China International Cartoon and Animation Festival. In 2012 he received a Letter of Appreciation from the Cabinet Secretariat’s National Policy Unit as one of the ‘Global Messengers of Japan’.

In 2013 he released, The Garden of Words, which won Best Anime Feature Film in Germany’s Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film. Also that year he was awarded the Shinmai Select Prize.

In 2016, Your Name. was released to great commercial success, becoming the second-highest-grossing Japanese film. At the 40th Japan Academy Film Prize, it won Excellent Director of the Year and Screenplay of the Year, a first for an animated film.

Plot details, title, and release date for the upcoming project will be unveiled on a later date.