Christian Bale, Florence Pugh, Robert Pattinson, and more join Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy And The Heron dub
Mark Hamill and Gemma Chan are also among the English-language cast of Miyazaki's latest film
The Boy And The Heron, the latest animated feature from Hayao Miyazaki, has landed a star-studded cast for its English dub, premiering in theaters December 8. Christian Bale, who voiced the titular character of Howl’s Moving Castle in the English-language version back in 2004, will return to the Miyazaki stable, along with Robert Pattinson, Florence Pugh, and a number of other big names.
Luca Padovan (You) will voice protagonist Mahito Maki, with Pattison serving as the voice of The Gray Heron. Bale plays Shoichi Maki, alongside Dave Bautista as The Parakeet King, Gemma Chan as Natsuko, Willem Dafoe as Noble Pelican, Karen Fukuhara as Lady Himi, Mark Hamill as Granduncle, Florence Pugh as Kiriko, with Mamoudou Athie, Tony Revolri, and Dan Stevens as the Parakeets. (Per Variety, “the English-language dub was made in alignment with the SAG-AFTRA Foreign Dubbing Agreement.”)
The Boy And The Heron follows “A young boy named Mahito yearning for his mother” who “ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead. There, death comes to an end, and life finds a new beginning,” the film’s synopsis reads. Miyazaki’s first film in ten years, which he both wrote and directed, it’s billed as “A semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death, and creation, in tribute to friendship.”
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September to largely positive reviews. Champion of animation Guillermo del Toro was on hand to introduce the movie at the festival, comparing Miyazaki’s excellence to Mozart and Van Gogh. “He has made his films as full of problems and questions as he is. These are not easy films, but they are films that portray him so intimately that you feel that you are having a conversation with him,” Del Toro said. “They are paradoxical, because he understands that beauty cannot exist without horror, and that delicacy cannot exist without brutality. He makes elegance of these things, and shows life on the screen in a beautiful way.”