Werner Herzog is stepping into animation, and he’s teaming up with the studios behind Flee and The Animatrix to make it happen.
The legendary German filmmaker behind Grizzly Man and Aguirre, the Wrath of God is bringing his best-selling novel The Twilight World to the screen as an animated feature.
The film will tell the true and strange story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese intelligence officer who refused to accept that World War II had ended. For nearly three decades, he held out in the Philippine jungle, waging a one-man war against an enemy that no longer existed.
Narrated by Herzog himself, the film is being developed with animation studios that specialize in emotionally rich, visually ambitious storytelling. Sun Creature Studio, the team behind the Oscar-nominated Flee will lead production from their France-based studio.
Psyop, the U.S.- and Germany-based studio known for its creative worldbuilding, is also on board as a co-producer.
The screenplay comes from Herzog, along with Michael Arias (Tekkonkinkreet, The Animatrix) and Luca Vitale. For Herzog, it was an unexpected evolution from page to screen.
“I always felt that Hiroo Onoda’s story, having spanned almost 30 years of fever dreams in the jungle, was best suited for literature, not cinema—which is why I chose to tell it through a novel.”
That changed when Psyop approached him with the idea of animation.
“It wasn’t until the producers at Psyop approached me about adapting Onoda’s story into an animated film that I realized the potential that animation had to tell this story in a truly compelling and imaginative way.”
Producer Andrew Linsk of Psyop is thrilled to be working with Herzog, calling it “a masterclass in nuanced storytelling.”
“This particular story—because of the dreamlike and expressionistic way that it deals with the characters’ perception of the passage of time, is particularly suited to animation,” he said, describing the screenplay as “unconventional.”
Amanda Miller, also producing for Psyop, added: “The sensibility of the studio, coupled with their vast network of French animation talent, makes them the perfect fit for this project.”
The Twilight World is currently in development, with production slated to begin in early 2026. Meanwhile, Herzog is also busy shooting his next live-action feature, Bucking Fastard, starring Kate and Rooney Mara.
It’s a wild time in Herzog’s world, and this new project might be one of his most unique explorations yet.
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