them to continue their work. For the character designs, Honda was chosen because he is someone who draws elegant pictures that ordinary people don't frown upon and is genuinely talented in the animation industry, in order to make sure that the movie would not end up being just for a few animation fans just because it is an animation movie. Some of the character designs were done by Kon himself, and all the posters of Chiyoko in the movie were also drawn by Kon. This is Kon's last traditional animation, as his later works were digital animations. And most of the scenes are drawn based on Kon's layout. The budget was initially 130 million yen, and the final budget was around 100 million and a few tens of millions of yen, one of the lowest production costs for an animated film in Japan. Release The film was released in North America on September 12, 2003, distributed by DreamWorks' arthouse and foreign movie publishing company Go Fish Pictures, with a total of six screens. Theatrical anime distribution company Eleven Arts acquired the North American rights and re-released the film theatrically in its original Japanese language version on August 13, 2019 and in an all-new English dubbed version on August 19, 2019. Box office Commercially, the film performed modestly on its US release earning $18,732 on its opening weekend and $37,285 during its full three-week release. The film was shown almost exclusively in New York and Los Angeles and received a minimal advertising campaign from Go Fish Pictures, a division of DreamWorks SKG. Although the scale of the release was not large, the merit of the theatrical release was not only in the box-office revenue, but also in the fact that critics would view the film and publish reviews and criticisms in general newspapers, magazines and websites, which would raise awareness of the work and reach a wider audience than just anime fans. Theme Millennium Actress began with a request to make a trompe l'oeil movie like the previous Perfect Blue. However, it was only a film technique, not a film theme. Both works share the same methodology of "blurring the boundary between fiction and reality," and both works are like two sides of the same coin for Kon. The previous film focused on the negative side of human nature, while this film focuses on the positive side. The previous film depicted