The first English trailer for Studio Ghibli's The Boy and the Heron is here

The Boy and the Heron
(Image credit: GKIDS/Studio Ghibli)

The first English trailer for The Boy and the Heron, the new animated film from Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki, is here, and if you want to hear Robert Pattinson as a talking bird boy do I have good news for you.

The cast for the English dub of The Boy and the Heron had previously been announced and includes the talent of Christian Bale, Dave Bautista, Gemma Chan, Willem Dafoe, Karen Fukuhara, Mark Hamill, Florence Pugh, and, of course, Robert Pattinson as the titular Heron. (Amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strikes, a press release notes that the dub "was produced in accordance with the SAG-AFTRA Foreign Dubbing Agreement.")

You can check out the trailer for yourself below, but it seems like a vibrant dub with a load of personality - and, of course, whether you're a dub or a sub fan, the visuals look predictably spectacular.

The Boy and the Heron is a bit of an odd case when it comes to trailers, as the film was released in Japanese theaters earlier this year with no major promotional effort. A teaser intended for English-language audiences released back in September was the first official trailer for the film, but it didn't include any dialog or strong clues about the film's plot.

The Boy and the Heron is officially set for release in theaters across the US and Canada on December 8, 2023. Special preview screenings are scheduled to begin in New York and Los Angeles on November 22.

Check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming movies for 2023 and beyond. 

Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.