Godzilla Animated Movie on the Way from Toho

August 19, 2016

According to Variety, Toho Company, Ltd. has announced that they have begun production on a feature-length Godzilla animated movie, titled simply Godzilla, to be released in 2017. An official website for the film with production art has just launched.

The first animated film featuring the iconic monster will be produced with Polygon Pictures, with Kobun Shizuno (“Detective Conan” series) and Hiroyuki Seshita (“Knights of Sidonia”) co-directing from a screenplay by Gen Urobuchi (Psycho-Pass: The Movie).

“We’re aiming to make a big-scale animation entertainment that people who love Godzilla and people who know nothing about him can both enjoy,” Shizuno said in a statement.

Funimation Films is slated to release the latest Japanese live-action film Shin Godzilla (or Godzilla Resurgence as it’s also known) in all of the Americas (North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean). Funimation is currently planning to release Shin Godzilla in theaters in late 2016, after it has grossed nearly $50 million in Japan alone.

Shin Godzilla (“Shin Gojira”) is a Japanese tokusatsu kaiju film – a live-action science fiction monster movie featuring special effects. It is the 29th Godzilla film produced by Toho. The film is co-directed by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi. Both directors performed double duties as writer and visual effects director respectively. Higuchi most recently directed the live-action film adaption of Attack on Titan (“Shingeki no Kyojin”), which was released in 2015. Shin Godzilla stars Hiroki Hasegawa and Satomi Ishihara – both alums of the Attack on Titan movie – and Yutaka Takenouchi.

Meanwhile, Legendary is slated to release Godzilla 2 — the sequel to Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Hollywood iteration — on March 22, 2019. Edwards dropped out of the sequel earlier this year, and no replacement director is currently attached.