Following its victory in the Best Animated Feature category at the 2024 Oscars, The Boy and the Heron will finally be landing on streaming. The movie is set to arrive on Max, the streaming service from HBO, later this year.
The Boy and the Heron was directed by Hayao Miyazaki, the legendary co-founder of Japan’s Studio Ghibli. While the animation house has produced a number of projects over the last decade, this film was the first since 2013’s The Wind Rises to be directed by Miyazaki himself.
The English dub for the movie, advertised as the animation master’s final film, boasts an impressive number of A-list actors, including an impossible to identify Robert Pattinson, Florence Pugh (voicing both the younger and much older version of the same character), Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Mark Hamill, and Gemma Chan.
Along with the news of The Boy and the Heron coming to Max in the U.S., Warner Brothers announced a multiyear agreement designed to extend Studio Ghibli’s relationship with GKIDS, the distributor that has exclusively housed Studio Ghibli’s catalogue since 2020. The extension means other favorites, including My Neighbor Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away, and Kiki’s Delivery Service will remain available exclusively on Max for years to come. The streaming premiere date for The Boy and the Heron has yet to be announced.
“Our subscribers are always looking for unique stories, and we are happy to continue to offer these award-winning, critically acclaimed films and to add The Boy and the Heron to our deep and rich Max content offering,” a representative of Warner Bros. Discovery shared in a statement.
Miyazaki, in an incredibly iconic move, didn’t make an appearance at this year’s Oscars ceremony — which we all know, thanks to director Bong Joon-Ho, is a very local affair anyway.
Revisit our New York Film Festival review of The Boy and the Heron here, and watch the trailer below.