and a great success at Japan's box office since it took number one spot from Disney's Pirates of the Carabbean: Dead Man's Chest two weeks ago, and stayed at the top last weekend

The movie is called "Gedo Senki", and is the newest movie released by the famous Studio Ghibli, which has produced all of Hayao Miyazaki's movies for the last 22 years now (best known for titles such as Mononoke Hime and Sen to Chihiro). "Gedo Senki" is also directed by Miyazaki - Goro Miyazaki, son of Hayao Miyazaki. It is said that for a long time, the father was opposed to his son's directing the movie because of a lack of experience in the anime industry (but has since then changed his mind, at least to a certain extent)

The story is based on the Earthsea books series, and more specifically on the third volume. So far, the critics are rather good, although the comparison with Goro's father's work is systematically at Hayao Miyazaki's advantage....

Disney has the rights to distribute the movie in the US, but no release date has been announced so far

You can find all the informations you may wish for, inlcuding pictures, links to reviews and trailers, etc, at Ghibli World, which is btw one GREAT site for all Ghibli news, maybe the most comprehensive non-Japanese news site about the studio so far :-)