Keanu Reeves Joins 'Hidari', Which Still Needs Funding — SkimNews
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- Keanu Reeves agreed to voice the lead in "Hidari" after watching the proof-of-concept pilot, his team answering about a week after the screening was arranged and a Zoom call following; Kawamura Masashi said at the Tokyo International Film Festival that the actor had already seen the pilot before his casting was announced at Cannes in May.
- Kawamura Masashi said the hand-carved puppet's design came from "Mifune Toshiro and Keanu Reeves added together, divided by two and then aged" — reflecting the team's heavy Kurosawa influence — and that he kept Reeves at the top of his casting list after the pilot screening.
- S.S. Rajamouli asked "How did you make this?" after Kawamura showed him "Hidari" at Annecy, ending in a standing conversation of about 30 minutes about how the stop-motion film was made.
- Hidari's proof-of-concept short — shot about three years ago with the filmmakers paying for it themselves plus crowdfunding and posted on YouTube — has drawn roughly 5.3 million views and about 120,000 followers, many of them overseas.
- Film Frontier, backed by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, paid for the team's travel to pitch at the Annecy Animation Showcase in the Cannes Film Market, where the hand-carved puppet drew bigger crowds than its makers and put the film before live-action and action fans as well as distributors and agents.
- Matsumoto Noriko said talks in Busan earlier this month with a U.S. company that offered to fund the entire budget in exchange for all the rights have stalled, with the team still selling the project for grants and overseas distribution partnerships.
- Ogawa Iku said stop-motion remains niche in commercial film and TV animation, even as festival shorts and student sections fill with it and studios from Europe, North America and beyond converge on Annecy.
Why it matters: The marquee names have delivered visibility — a 5.3 million-view pilot and packed festival showcases — but the budget is not closed. A U.S. offer to fund the entire project in exchange for all rights stalled in Busan, leaving the team still seeking grants and overseas distributor partnerships.
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