A month ahead of its North American theatrical release, Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle has an English trailer. The casting is especially significant given the importance of song in the animated film about a schoolgirl who becomes a famous singer — and the trailer is our first glimpse at an all-new English soundtrack.
In her first major role, Kylie McNeill will play Suzu and her virtual persona, the titular Belle. McNeill will also perform the songs originally written in Japanese and performed by singer-songwriter Kaho Nakamura. GKIDS says Taisei Iwasaki, Takayuki Chiyo, and Ludvig Forssell supervised the soundtracks’ adaptation into English.
Joining McNeill in the main cast are the more veteran voice actors Chace Crawford as Justin, Manny Jacinto as Shinobu, and Hunter Schafer as Ruka. GKIDS shared the names of the entire cast in an announcement on Twitter.
Belle is Hosoda’s twelfth feature film and his fourth with Studio Chizu. Hosoda co-founded the studio with producer Yuichiro Saito in 2011 and has received critical acclaim for all of his productions there, most notably 2018’s Mirai.
The film first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was released in Japanese theaters in July. The film’s North American distributor, GKIDS, produced the English dub of Belle along with the recording studio NYAV Post. GKIDS also announced that the soundtrack (featuring McNeill’s performances) will be available on Jan.14 via Milan Records.
Belle will see an IMAX release on Jan. 12 and get a limited theatrical release in the US and Canada on Jan. 14.