Independent theaters in California, Massachusetts list March opening

American theater chain AMC is listing a February 12 opening for Mamoru Hosoda's The Boy and the Beast ( Bakemono no Ko ) anime film. The Laemmle theater chain in California and the Amherst Cinema theater in Massachusetts are also listing that the film will open in these theaters on March 4 and March 5, respectively.

Funimation Entertainment licensed the American rights to the film, and plans to release the film nationwide in early 2016, but has not yet provided an exact opening date. Theatrical screenings have also been set for France, and the major French movie studio Gaumont is handling international sales outside Asia. Funimation is working with Gaumont International to release the film.

The Fantasic Film Festival in Austin hosted the U.S. premiere of the film in September. Laemmle's Music Hall theater in Beverly Hills, California also screened the film for a week last month.

The story of The Boy and the Beast is set in the human realm (Tokyo's Shibuya ward) and the bakemono realm ("Jūtengai"). In these two worlds that must not intersect, there lives a lonely boy and a lonely bakemono. One day, the boy gets lost in the bakemono world, becomes the disciple of the bakemono Kumatetsu, and is renamed Kyūta.

The film debuted at #1 in the Japanese box-office on July 11 and earned 667,035,100 yen (about US$5.4 million) in its first two days. It eventually surpassed the total box office earnings of Hosoda's previous film, Wolf Children . The film was the second-highest grossing domestic film in Japan in 2015.

Hosoda (Summer Wars, Wolf Children) created and scripted the movie. The film is Hosoda's first film since 2012, when his relatively new animation movie company Studio Chizu released Wolf Children as its first project. Masakatsu Takagi (Wolf Children) scored the soundtrack.

Yen Press licensed the film's novel and manga adaptation, and it will release the novel and the first volume of the manga on February 23.

Thanks to getmorerw for the news tip.