Anno and Izubuchi co-direct Cosmoship Yamato √2199 film

Hideaki Anno and Yutaka Izubuchi are making a new Yamato film together. Cosmoship Yamato √2199 was announced on 6 October 2026 — the 52nd anniversary of Space Battleship Yamato — with Anno serving as director and production executive producer and Izubuchi as co-director.

A new site opened for the film and published the first teaser visual. It shows the battleship Yamato lifting away from a ruined landscape towards a band of the Milky Way. No release date has been attached yet, and the film's site and its own account on X are the places updates will be posted.

Two directors, two studios

Animation production is being handled jointly by Production I.G and Studio Khara — the first time the two companies have co-produced a film. Studio Khara published the same notice on its own news page the same day, and the film's site carries the project under the copyright of Nishizaki Yoshinobu and Shin Office Academy.

Both studios have deep roots in the material. Anno has been attached to a new Yamato feature for years, and Izubuchi is closely associated with the franchise's modern remake line. The teaser art is deliberately restrained: one ship, one sky, and the title in white calligraphy, with nothing about cast or story revealed yet.

Yamato's anniversary year

The announcement is timed to the exact day the original Space Battleship Yamato television series began its run in October 1974, which makes this the franchise's 52nd birthday. The series followed the Second World War battleship Yamato, resurrected as a space-faring vessel to defend Earth, and it grew into one of Japan's longest-running space opera properties.

Yamato is already busy in 2026. Yamato yo Towa ni: Rebel 3199, the current remake line, is being released as seven films, and its seventh chapter, “Rainbow-coloured Reincarnation”, opens in Japan on 30 October 2026. The new film arrives at the end of a year spent marking the property, rather than at the start of a quiet one.

Our opinion

Anno finally directing Yamato is the least surprising and most interesting decision in anime this week. He has spent a career reworking the shows that formed him, and Yamato is the one that started it all; pairing him with Izubuchi, who has already rebuilt this franchise once, puts a mythologiser and a mechanic on the same bridge.

The honest caveat is scope. A teaser with no date is a promise, not a schedule, and Khara's own output has taught fans to expect long waits. But a first co-production between Production I.G and Khara, unveiled on the franchise's 52nd birthday, is a genuine event rather than a marketing beat — and both studios choosing to post it themselves says they want it treated that way.