Southeast Asian cable channel Disney Channel has announced on Saturday that Studio Ghibli’s first animated feature film Laputa: Castle in the Sky is set to premiere on the channel this May.
The anime movie will premiere on Sunday, May 20, at 10:00am (09:00am JKT/BKK), with an encore presentation at 08:00pm (07:00pm JKT/BKK).
Pazu, an engineer’s apprentice, finds a young girl, Sheeta, floating down from the sky, and discovers they are both searching for a legendary floating castle, Laputa. Together, they embark on a daring quest and encounter greedy pirates, secret agents and astounding obstacles that keep them from the truth – and from each other. (Synopsis from Disney)
Laputa: Castle in the Sky is the very first animated feature film of renowned animation studio Studio Ghibli, which was written and directed by its founder Hayao Miyazaki.
The anime movie was first released in Japanese cinemas on August 1986, earning only JP¥1.16 billion (about PHP549 million) in gross sales, making it the lowest among all Ghibli movies, but became an instant hit when the movie started airing on television.
In its recent airings, the term “Balse” (バルス) broke records for most tweets-per-second on social networking site Twitter in 2011 and 2013.
The anime movie was given an English dub treatment twice with the first in 1989, and the second in 2003, featuring the voices of Anna Pacquin as “Sheeta” and James Van Der Beek as “Pazu”, which was produced by Disney.
Disney Channel in Southeast Asia had previously aired Studio Ghibli films, including Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro and the Academy Award-winning Spirited Away.
The channel is currently airing recent Pokémon television and movie adaptations, as well as Beyblade Burst series.
