Dutch director and animator’s debut feature is being co-produced by France’s Wild Bunch and Japan’s Studio Ghibli, with Isao Takahata serving as artistic producer.
Dutch director and animator Michaël Dudok de Wit’s The Red Turtle finally has a release date. Japanese film company TOHO has announced its lineup of films to be distributed in 2016, according to a report by Anime News Network, including the Oscar-winning director’s forthcoming animated feature, which is set for release in September 2016.
The Red Turtle is being co-produced by France’s Wild Bunch and Japan’s Studio Ghibli, with Ghibli taking on the main production costs and Isao Takahata serving as artistic producer. de Wit wrote The Red Turtle with screenwriter and director Pascale Ferran (Lady Chatterly, Bird People). The story takes place after a shipwreck, and follows a man marooned on a desert island whose attempts to escape on a raft are thwarted by a giant turtle that sinks the makeshift craft.
The film was introduced earlier this year, in June, at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France as a special feature in the “Work in Progress” category that introduces highly-anticipated films still in production. The film follows the filmmaker’s Academy Award-winning short, Father and Daughter (2000), and the Oscar-nominated The Monk and the Fish (1994).
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
