Spacetoon Pictures, which distributed animation movies in MENA, announced that it was bringing the Japanese anime Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet to cinemas on May 27.

The movie had successfully made it to the top three highest opening weekends since the pandemic in Japan and had topped the China box office in its first two days, surpassing The Fellowship of the Ring.

The story was set in Japan while preparations were underway to commemorate the World Sports Games (WSG), the world’s biggest sports event, hosted in Tokyo. The Hyperlinear bullet train began operation to coincide with the WSG’s opening ceremony. As the world watched, disaster suddenly struck the host venue, where the sponsors of the games were gathered. A crisis unfolded as several industry leaders were kidnapped in quick succession. That’s when Conan began his investigations, while Shuichi Aki helped him from behind the scenes.

The movie was released in the original Japanese version with Arabic and English subtitles, as well as in the Arabic dubbed version. Spacetoon Pictures worked on localising and dubbing the movie into Arabic with a group of Arab voice actors, who were known for dubbing the Detective Conan anime series since its first run on Spacetoon TV in the early 2000s.

Commenting on the release, Kamel Weiss, Strategic Business Development Director at Spacetoon, said: “We were thrilled to bring Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet to the Middle East region, hoping to continue the series of successes this movie had created so far in each country it debuted in. We always worked on delivering new experiences to anime fans in MENA by bringing the top anime movies to cinemas.”

Additionally, the movie prequel, Detective Conan: The Scarlet Alibi, had been available online on Spacetoon Go since May 7.

Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet was available in movie theatres across UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Iraq on May 27, in both Japanese and Arabic dubbed versions.