The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki’s last [???] feature) has received rave reviews. And the movie, which is distributed by the company GKIDS in the U.S., has a star-studded voice cast that includes some unexpected choices.
GKIDS was in charge of pulling the English-speaking ensemble together to dub the film (check out some of the dub in the trailer above), and doing so was a big endeavor, as a new article reveals.
IndieWire came out with a piece today that chronicles GKIDS’ journey in pulling together the voice cast for the English dub of the film. The entire piece not only chronicles the art of dubbing in the first place, but also reveals the unexpected casting choice for the heron, a creature who, in the fantasy world in the second half of the movie, viciously teases the main character, Mahito, that his mother is still alive (and has some other secrets as well).
GKIDS’ president, Dave Jesteadt, initially thought of Danny DeVito for the heron, but Studio Ghibli had a different type in mind. “[Ghibli] said, ‘Oh no, in Japan it’s actually going to be played by a young, 30-year-old hot singer-actor guy [Masaki Suda],’” Jesteadt explained to IndieWire. “I was like, ‘What!?’ They said, ‘Yeah, so for the English dub we want someone who matches that age and would also be unusual in the role.”
GKIDS ended up with none other than Robert Pattinson, who took to the part with gusto in his first voice acting role. Pattinson was joined by other A-list actors, including Florence Pugh who plays another complex role, and they also turned to Miyazaki alums for many of the parts as well.
“[Ghibli] told us that casting was a really important aspect in regards to how they conceive this movie as being a love letter to the studio,” Jesteadt said, “and as perhaps the final Miyazaki film that there would effectively be cameos from people that audiences might recognize as voice actors from previous films. It was a big deal for them that the actor who played Howl in Howl’s Moving Castle returned as Mahito’s father, and they told us it would be great if we were able to do a similar stunt. So we tried to do that as much as possible with people who had appeared in previous dubs.”
GKIDS followed through on that goal. Christian Bale, who voiced Howl in the dub of Howl’s Moving Castle, is in The Boy and the Heron as the main character’s father. Other casting calls include Willem Dafoe as an anguished pelican (his second time in a Miyazaki film, having played Lord Cob in Tales from Earthsea), and Mark Hamill as the main character’s grand-uncle. GKIDS clearly put a lot of thought and effort into the dub process, and you can read the whole IndieWire article to get more insight into the process.
The Boy and the Heron is playing in theaters now.
