‘Your Name’ director Makoto Shinkai announces his next film, ‘Suzume No Tojimari’

Makoto Shinkai, the director of the acclaimed anime film Your Name, has announced his next feature-length project, Suzume No Tojimari.

The director announced the movie on his official Twitter account on Wednesday (December 15). The film is slated to premiere in the fall of 2022 (between September and December), although a firm release date has yet to be announced.

“It should be a fun movie,” Shinkai said in his tweet. His description of the film also hinted that it would combine elements of “a modern adventure story and an action movie”.

The tweet also includes the first official visual for the film. Check it out below.

今、新作映画『すずめの戸締まり』を作っています。列島各地に開いてしまう、災いの扉。主人公の鈴芽（すずめ）がその扉を閉めて旅をするロードムービーであり、現代の冒険物語であり、彼女がある存在と共に戦うアクションムービーでもあります。楽しい映画になるはずです。2022年秋どうかお楽しみに！ pic.twitter.com/26prU74yaY

— 新海誠 (@shinkaimakoto) December 15, 2021

The film’s announcement was followed by a press conference for Suzume No Tojimari on the official Toho Animation YouTube channel.

The upcoming film will follow the adventures of Suzume, a 17-year-old girl living in a quiet town in Kyushu who meets a young man on a journey to ‘look for doors’. She follows him to a decrepit building in the mountains, where she discovers a mysterious, free-standing door.

“Suzume feels drawn by an invisible power and reaches out to the door,” reads the film’s official synopsis (via Crunchyroll). “Soon, doors all over Japan start opening one after another. The doors that opened must be closed to shut out calamity that lays on the other side.”

Shinkai is writer, producer and director of Suzume No Tojimari. He is best known for films like Your Name and Weathering With You. Joining him to work on the film are Your Name collaborator Kenichi Tsuchiya as character designer, Takumi Tanji (The Garden Of Words) as art director, with co-animation from CoMix Wave Films and distribution by Toho.

Your Name, released in 2016, has enjoyed massive success globally since its release, becoming the third highest-grossing anime film of all time. It was also awarded Screenplay of the Year at the 2016 Japan Academy Film Prize Association awards. A live-action remake with Paramount Pictures and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot studio is currently in the works.

In other anime film news, Netflix revealed the trailer for its upcoming apocalyptic parkour film Bubble earlier this month. The film, directed by Attack On Titan‘s Tetsuro Araki, is slated to release on the streaming platform on April 28.

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