Your Name Director Reveals Next Movie, Suzume no Tojimari

Makoto Shinkai, who is best known for writing and directing the critically acclaimed films Your Name and Weathering with You, has announced his next project.

According to a post made to Twitter, Shinkai's latest movie is titled Suzume no Tojimari and tells the story of Suzume, a 17-year-old girl who lives in Kyushu. After she opens a mysterious door in an abandoned building with the help of a young man, similar doors begin appearing all over Japan and begin causing problems throughout the nation. Suzume sets out to close all of the mysteriously multiplying doors before they overtake the country. In his tweet, Shinkai described the film as a "modern adventure story" and said, "it should be a fun movie."

Shinkai is writing, producing and directing Suzume no Tojimari, and he has brought back several members of the creative teams from Your Name and Weathering with You to help bring his new story to life. This includes character designer Masayoshi Tanaka, Kenichi Tsuchiya as the animation director and Takumi Tanji as the film's art director.

CoMix Wave Films, the studio behind Shinkai's first feature film The Place Promised in Our Early Days, is animating Suzume no Tojimari with STORY inc. producing and Toho disturbing the movie inside Japan. As of writing, the voice cast of the movie has not been revealed, but Toho has promised that more details about the film will be announced at an upcoming press conference.

Suzume no Tojimari isn't the only high profile anime movie scheduled to premiere in 2022: Netflix is collaborating with WIT Studio (Ranking of Kings, Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song) to create Bubble, an original anime film that twists traditional mermaid stories.  That movie will also premiere in 2022, and also features creative team of anime industry veterans, including Gen Urobuchi (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Psycho-Pass) as the screenwriter, Tetsurō Araki (Attack on Titan, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress) as the director and Hiroyuki Sawano (The Seven Deadly Sins: Cursed by Light, No Guns Life) as the music composer.

Suzume no Tojimari is scheduled to hit theaters in Japan sometime in fall 2022. Details about the movie's international release have yet to be announced. In the meantime, several of Shinkai's earlier works are now available for streaming: Your Name is available on Funimation and Weathering with You can be found on HBO Max.

Source: Twitter, via Crunchyroll