GKIDS, a distributor of award-winning animation for both adult and family audiences, announced today the English-language voice cast for their upcoming release of Studio Ghibli’s From Up on Poppy Hill. The March 2013 release will star Gillian Anderson, Sarah Bolger, Beau Bridges, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bruce Dern, Jeff Dunham, Isabelle Fuhrman, Christina Hendricks, Ron Howard, Chris Noth, Emily Osment, Aubrey Plaza, Charlie Saxton, Alex Wolff and Anton Yelchin.
From Up On Poppy Hill was the top-grossing Japanese film of 2011, earning over $56 million at the Japanese box office and winning the Japan Academy Prize for Animation in 2012. The film was directed by Goro Miyazaki from a screenplay by Hayao Miyazaki, marking the first feature collaboration between father and son. The English-language version is being produced by Studio Ghibli with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall executive producing.
Set in Yokohama in 1963, the film centers on a high school couples innocent love and the secrets surrounding their births. The story takes place in a Japan that is picking itself up from the devastation of World War II and preparing to host the 1964 Olympics and the mood is one of both optimism and conflict as the new generation struggles to embrace modernity and throw off the shackles of a troubled past. The film’s rich color palette and painterly detail capture the beauty of Yokohama’s harbor and its lush surrounding hillsides, while the 1960s pop soundtrack evokes nostalgia for an era of innocence and hope.
