'Mary and The Witch's Flower' English Trailer Debuts

We've seen a number of trailers already from Mary And The Witch's Flower, the new animated feature from Former Studio Ghibli director Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Studio Ponoc, who make their feature debut with the film have been smart about releasing English subtitled versions of them all, even before news of international distribution broke. What we haven't seen up until now, however, is anything from the English version of the film.

That's changed now, thanks to Altitude, the UK-based outlet who is handling international distribution of the film.

The new trailer gives us our first sniff of the dub, which features the voices of Ruby Barnhill, Kate Winslet, Jim Broadbent and Ewen Bremner. It's different from most dubs you will have seen, as all the accents are British, which seems somehow more appropriate given the film's faux-European fantasy setting.

Inspired by British novel The Little Broomstick by Mary Stewart, the film looks in many ways to be a greatest hits compilation from past Ghibli films. It combines elements that could have come from Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service- with a bit of Harry Potter thrown in for good measure- and more to create something that appears both new and familiar. And with that new Miyazaki film still years away, we'll take what we can get!

Mary And The Witch's Flower will be coming to the US via GKIDS from January 18th and will be released in Australia and New Zealand the same day via Madman.  It will be released in the UK by Altitude in 2018 (date to be announced).