Crunchyroll Lands Worldwide Rights to Makoto Shinkai's Next Film
Crunchyroll has acquired worldwide distribution rights to Makoto Shinkai's next feature film, covering all territories outside Asia except India, according to Deadline.
No title, plot details, or release date were disclosed at the time of the announcement on 11 August 2026. The deal reunites Crunchyroll with one of Japan's most commercially successful animation directors, whose previous film Suzume (2023) grossed over $300 million worldwide and earned a Golden Globe nomination.
Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures previously partnered on the global theatrical rollout of Suzume. That earlier deal was finalised at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022, with Crunchyroll, Sony, and Wild Bunch teaming up to distribute the film — Suzume no Tojimari in Japanese — across all major territories in early 2023 (The Hollywood Reporter). Japanese studio Toho, which holds worldwide rights to Suzume excluding South Korea and India, coordinated the international handoff. Suzume went on to win Best Film at the 8th Annual Crunchyroll Anime Awards.
The film followed 17-year-old Suzume Iwato, who meets a mysterious young man named Souta tasked with closing doors to the Ever-After before disasters spill across Japan. A mischievous cat called Daijin turns Souta into a three-legged chair, sending Suzume on a cross-country journey to rescue him.
Shinkai, born in Nagano Prefecture in 1973, has built a body of work that bridges festival prestige and mass commercial reach. His 2016 film Your Name became one of the highest-grossing anime films of all time. Weathering With You (2019) was Japan's official submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Earlier titles — 5 Centimeters per Second (2007), Children Who Chase Lost Voices (2011), The Garden of Words (2013) — cemented his reputation among anime audiences before his mainstream crossover.
His career began on a smaller scale. The self-produced short Voices of a Distant Star (2002) won several awards. His first full-length feature, The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004), took Best Animated Film at the 59th Mainichi Film Concours.
For fans, the new deal means Shinkai's next film will reach theatres through the same distribution pipeline that carried Suzume to global screens. Whether it matches that film's $300 million gross is a question for another day; for now, the machinery is in place, and the director's track record gives the arrangement real commercial weight.
Crunchyroll has not yet announced a release window.
