Lost Star

Lost Star is a 2003 animated romantic fantasy comedy-drama action film directed by Tatsuya Hironaka and produced by Shinichi Ikeda, Tomonori Ochikoshi and Seaton McLean. Starring the voices of Shane Kippel, Hilary Duff, George Hearn, Kate Winslet, Jason Bateman, Michael Rhys, Robert Tinkler and Christina Schmidt, the film focuses on student Alistair Morris, who, during a commotion with a humanoid entity (George Hearn), suddenly meets and saves a girl (Hilary Duff) from the entity, who he names Eloise. It turns out this girl is really from another world who came to Earth in the form of a star, and the entity is a "Demon of the Night" named Gideon, who goes around Earth slaughtering it's inhabitants to try and increase his lifespan, and he intends to capture her in order to use her lifeforce to become immortal.

Hironaka got the idea for the film in 1995, and pitched it to J.C.Staff a year later. After he directed the On the Ropes segment for the British anthology movie London Stories, he decided to depart from the convential production of anime films and not only seek funding from foreign parties, but also have the film be produced in English to try and increase potential revenue. The film was financed Japanese companies Denstu, Inc and J.C.Staff, Canadian film and television company Alliance Atlantis, British production company HandMade Films and American production company Echo Lake Entertainment.

Japanese band SPEED performed the song Be My Love for the film's Japanese release, whilst Sixpence None The Richer performed the song Breathe for the film's Western release. The film had it's world premiere at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, Canada on September 20, 2003, and was released to Japanese theaters by Movie-Eye Entertainment, Inc. on October 11, 2003, in Canadian theaters on October 24 by Alliance Atlantis, and in the United States by Focus Features on February 6, 2004. Critical reviews were generally positive, with praise towards the animation and voice acting, though some criticized the film's story for being fairly derivative. The film also grossed $65 million against a $20 million budget. Despite the film's underperformance, it would get a cult following after following it's home video release and through TV broadcasts on Showtime.

Plot
Coming soon!

Additional voices

 * Dwayne Hill
 * Len Carlson
 * David Sparrow
 * Susan Laney Dalton
 * Tim Hamauguchi
 * Katie Griffin
 * Julie Lemieux
 * Neil Crone
 * Stevie Vallance
 * Tony Daniels
 * Philip Williams
 * Judy Marshak
 * George Buza
 * John Stocker
 * Bailey Stocker
 * Rory O'Shea

Release
Lost Star had it's world premiere at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, Canada on September 20, 2003. People invited to the showing included anime fans, as well as other actors and producers. The film then had it's Japanese theatrical release on October 11, 2003, through foreign and independent film distributor Movie-Eye Entertainment, Inc. It was first released in North America in Canada on October 24, 2003 by Alliance Atlantis, and was originally planned to be released in the United States by Miramax Films, but due to conflicting interests on when the film would be released, Miramax sold the distribution rights to Focus Features, who released it in the United States on February 6, 2004.

Home media
On June 1, 2004, Lost Star was released on VHS and DVD in the United States by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. Bonus features on the DVD release include the movie's US theatrical trailer, a music video for Don't Let Me Go, a making of featurette, multi-angle scene comparisons, actor interviews, production notes and a gallery. Universal released the film on Blu-ray for it's 10th anniversary on November 12, 2013.

In Japan, the film was released on DVD by VAP on August 25, 2004. This release contains both English and Japanese audio tracks.