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CinemaCon: Crunchyroll Acquires 3 New Films from Beloved Anime Series

Anime

By Kevin Credo

Published Apr 12, 2024

Highlights

Get ready for some sports anime excitement with Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle, hitting North American theaters on May 31, 2024.
Anime fans rejoice as Sony-owned Crunchyroll brings cult classic manga adaptations like Blue Lock to the big screen in 2024.
Enter the world of Overlord with the highly anticipated Sacred Kingdom film, set to debut in late 2024 and hitting select international markets.

One of the biggest annual trade shows for the movie industry, CinemaCon is an event that has become more and more of a mainstay in the annual pop culture sphere. Specifically dedicated to both movies as well as the craft of physical movie theaters, there was no better stage for Crunchyroll to announce a large slate of theatrical film releases for the North American market and beyond.

As anime continues to become more of a mainstay in global pop culture, the Sony-owned platform revealed its plans to bring 2010s and 2020s cult classic franchises to the big screen.

The Best Anime Movies On Crunchyroll, Ranked

Crunchyroll is best known for anime series, but the streaming service also has plenty of great anime films.

Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle

One of the most iconic sports anime of the 2010s is getting not one, but two theatrical films on the horizon. With the volleyball sports manga lasting for over eight years in Shōnen Jump, the Haikyu!! franchise has become a mainstay of sports anime in its own right, combining the intensity that fans of sports anime have come to expect with an engaging mixture of comedy and relatable character depth.

Billed as a double-feature finale to the anime series, the first film, The Dumpster Battle, has been confirmed for a limited-run theatrical distribution through Crunchyroll and Sony, spiking into theaters across North America on May 31, 2024. For longtime fans, the new film is set to be a perfect tenth-anniversary celebration for the original Haikyu!! anime’s initial Japanese broadcast in April of 2014.

Blue Lock the Movie: Episode Nagi

Adapted from the Weekly Shōnen manga that has been ongoing since 2018, the uniquely stylish Blue Lock centers around the Japanese national soccer team and their adoption of an intense new training program crafted to develop the ultimate soccer strike; “Blue Lock”.

Adapting the Nagi arc from the manga, the new film, Blue Lock the Movie: Episode Nagi, brings together the same director of the main anime series, Shunsuke Ishikawa, along with the original Japanese voice staff and the close supervision of original manga creator Muneyuki Kaneshiro. With a Japanese theatrical run beginning in April, the North American theatrical distribution is set to come to theaters on June 28, 2024. Earlier this week, Crunchyroll also revealed a first-look teaser trailer:

Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom

Rounding out the announcements is a new feature film based around one of the 2010s most popular pulp seinen titles, Overlord. Adapted from the light novel series by Kugane Maruyama, Overlord was one of the biggest titles of the MMO-gone-wild subgenre of isekai that was massively popular in the mid-2010s, along with titles like Sword Art Online and Log Horizon which helped set the stage for the juggernaut genre that isekai has become today.

Picking up after the fourth season of the successful anime series, yet aiming to be standalone and accessible in its own right, the highly anticipated Sacred Kingdom film centers around several major factions from the Overlord universe teaming up to battle a looming, monstrous invasion. While Crunchyroll has a general late 2024 theatrical window that may depend from region to region, and in accord with the fall 2024 Japanese release planned by anime studio Madhouse, it’s worth noting that The Sacred Kingdom is confirmed by Crunchyroll for select distribution in Latin American and other international markets.