New Ni no Kuni Movie Coming to Netflix This Month

Earlier this week, it leaked that Netflix was getting ready to add the newest Dragon Quest movie to its library. Fast-forward a couple days, and now it’s been revealed the giant streaming platform is adding another video game movie to its ranks: the recent Ni no Kuni movie from Yoshiyuki Momose, which premiered in Japan back in August, but never made it’s international debut. That’s soon changing though, because starting on January 16, all Netflix users will be able to stream the movie.

“Studio Ghibli animator Yoshiyuki Momose (Spirited Away) directs this enchanting film based on the renowned video game,” reads an official pitch of the movie. “Two average teens go on a magical quest to save the life of their friend and her counterpart from another world. But love complicates their journey.”

For those that don’t know: the movie was produced by OLM and distributed by Warner Bros. in Japan. Debuting on August 23, 2019, it was received pretty warmly, but didn’t exactly light the world on fire. However, perhaps that will change when the localized version hits Netlfix later this month. After all, Ni no Kuni has more fans in the west than Japan, where it never really took off.

Unlike the aforementioned Dragon Quest movie, the gross revenue generated in the Japanese cinema market by Ni no Kuni was pretty humble. According to the movie’s IMDB page, it grossed a revenue of 2.86 million USD. For context, Dragon Quest grossed 11 million. And while Dragon Quest is quite popular in Japan, it’s not as big as it used to be.

Anyway, numbers aside, as you would expect, fans of the Bandai Namco video game series are excited about the news:

As always, feel free to leave a comment or two or three with your thoughts. Will you be watching this when it hits Netflix later this month?

Thanks, Gematsu.