GKIDS is putting Evangelion: Death (True)² & Rebirth on an American movie screen for the first time ever this Tuesday. The End of Evangelion follows the night after. Both screen in Japanese with English subtitles at AMC and Cinemark theaters nationwide, opening the studio’s Evangelion 30th Movie Fest.
Five months earlier, Studio Khara said the next chapter of Evangelion would be written by someone other than Hideaki Anno, the only person who has ever written it. This week’s screenings land close to the last chance to see his version of the story before that changes for good.
Two Nights at AMC and Cinemark
Night one, July 21, brings Evangelion: Death (True)² & Rebirth, a 70-minute condensation of the TV series’ first 24 episodes paired with early footage from what became The End of Evangelion. Night two, July 22, brings The End of Evangelion itself, the 1997 film that replaced the show’s abstract finale with a physical, city-leveling version of the same ending. Both start at 7 PM local time, with tickets for both nights on sale now through participating theater box offices.
The pairing is not incidental. The TV series ended with its climax playing out entirely inside Shinji’s head. The End of Evangelion gives the same events an external, physical form. Watching Death (True)² & Rebirth on Tuesday and The End of Evangelion on Wednesday is the closest a theater audience can get to seeing both halves of that ending side by side.
| Film | Japan Premiere | First North American Theatrical Run | July 2026 Screening |
|---|---|---|---|
| Evangelion: Death (True)² & Rebirth | March 15, 1997 | Never screened theatrically in North America before this week | July 21, 7 PM |
| The End of Evangelion | July 19, 1997 | March 17 and 20, 2024 | July 22, 7 PM |
Both films carry mature ratings. AMC’s own listing for the event notes that guests under 17 need a guardian who is 21 or older, a detail worth checking before buying tickets for a group.
The Film That Took 29 Years to Reach America
Death (True)² & Rebirth premiered in Japan on March 15, 1997. Tuesday is its first theatrical showing in North America, 29 years later, in the specific director’s cut configuration that combines Death (True) with Rebirth.
The End of Evangelion has a shorter wait behind it. GKIDS first brought the film to theaters nationwide for two nights in March 2024, more than 25 years after its original release. That two-night run grossed $603,219 in its opening weekend alone, on its way to $1.3 million domestically and $1.56 million worldwide, a strong result for a subtitled film built almost entirely on two scheduled screenings.
Those numbers matter here because they explain why GKIDS keeps returning to this format instead of a standard limited release. A 29-year-old anime film with two showtimes outdrew plenty of new wide releases on a per-screen basis, and that is the same commercial logic behind bringing Death (True)² & Rebirth back for its own premiere this week.
Why Is Evangelion’s Next Chapter Being Written by Someone Else?
Studio Khara announced on February 23, 2026, at the close of its three-day 30th anniversary festival in Yokohama, that a new Evangelion series called Next Genesis is in production. Yoko Taro, the video game writer and director behind NieR: Automata and Drakengard, is credited as series script supervisor and scriptwriter. Hideaki Anno, who wrote every prior version of Evangelion, is not.
Anno had already signaled this was coming. Fresh off finishing Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time in 2021, then Shin Ultraman in 2022 and Shin Kamen Rider in 2023, Anno described himself as mentally and physically wrecked by the pace and moved to a Space Battleship Yamato anniversary project as a break from filmmaking. Asked whether Evangelion could continue under someone else, he answered plainly.
I think it’d be an option for someone other than me to be the person to make it.
Anno made that comment to Asahi Shimbun in May 2024, nearly two years before Khara’s announcement became official. He added at the time that nothing was decided and that he was not ruling out making another one himself. Twenty one months later, Khara made the call.
Gainax’s Long Collapse Cleared Khara’s Path
Studio Khara did not inherit Evangelion by accident. Anno founded the studio in 2006 after leaving Gainax, the company that had produced the original 1995 series. What followed was a slow, occasionally litigious transfer of control that only finished very recently.
- 2006: Hideaki Anno leaves Gainax and founds Studio Khara, which goes on to produce the Rebuild films.
- 2014: Evangelion’s copyright fully transfers from Gainax to Khara.
- 2016: Khara sues Gainax for ¥100 million, roughly $900,000 at the time, in unpaid royalties, and wins.
- May 2024: Gainax files for bankruptcy in Tokyo District Court that May, the same month Anno tells Asahi Shimbun that a future Evangelion project could be led by someone else.
- December 2025: Gainax is the company ceased to exist entirely, closing a four-decade history.
- February 2026: Studio Khara announces Next Genesis, naming Yoko Taro as scriptwriter for the first time in the franchise’s history.
Anno’s reaction to Gainax’s final dissolution was not triumphant. He called it a genuinely saddening moment he was quietly accepting, a studio he had once belonged to finally gone. By the time Khara made its Next Genesis announcement ten weeks later, it held the Evangelion copyright outright, with no rival claimant left to answer to. That is not a small detail. A three-decade IP fight over who controls Evangelion is the reason Khara alone got to decide whether Anno’s name stayed on the next script.
Yoko Taro Isn’t Trying to Be Anno
The creative team assembled for Next Genesis reads like a deliberate departure from how Evangelion has always been made. Anno’s method was famously autobiographical. He has described the series as a reflection of his own depression, with characters standing in for pieces of his own psychology. Taro’s reputation runs almost the opposite way: fragmented timelines, unreliable narrators, and endings that recontextualize everything that came before.
- Yoko Taro – the NieR: Automata and Drakengard writer serves as series script supervisor and scriptwriter, his largest anime writing credit to date.
- Kazuya Tsurumaki – Anno’s longtime collaborator, who co-directed The End of Evangelion and all four Rebuild films, returns as co-director.
- Tōko Yatabe – an assistant director on Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, steps up to co-direct alongside Tsurumaki.
- Keiichi Okabe – the composer behind NieR: Automata’s score, joins from Taro’s regular creative circle to write the music.
Taro has said before that Evangelion directly inspired NieR, and that its fingerprints show up in almost everything he makes. After the announcement, he wrote on X, simply, that it had been announced and that he would do his best. It is a smaller, less agonized reaction than the franchise’s history might suggest, and that gap between Taro’s plainspoken enthusiasm and Anno’s decades of public struggle over the same material is exactly what makes the handoff feel so unusual.
Tsurumaki Already Did This With Gunbuster
Kazuya Tsurumaki is the one figure in this lineup who has already lived through a version of this exact transition. In 1988, Anno directed Gunbuster, a mecha series that shares clear DNA with what would become Evangelion. When Gainax revisited that world with Diebuster in 2004, it was Tsurumaki, not Anno, in the director’s chair, working with characters and structure inherited from someone else’s original vision.
That history is why Tsurumaki’s presence on Next Genesis reads less like a placeholder and more like a bridge. He has spent almost two decades translating Anno’s instincts into finished frames, from FLCL to the Rebuild tetralogy, and he is now the person best positioned to tell Taro what will and will not feel like Evangelion. Whether that is enough is an open question. Many longtime fans argue the franchise’s pull was never really the giant robots, it was Anno’s specific, difficult interior world, and that a story built to interrogate depression may resist being written by someone who has not lived that particular depression.
An English-language trailer for Next Genesis screened at the CloverWorks panel at Anime Expo 2026 on July 3, offering little beyond confirmation that production is underway. No premiere date, episode count, or plot description has been confirmed since.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the GKIDS Evangelion Screening Have an Age Restriction?
Yes. AMC’s own listing for the event notes that guests under 17 need a guardian who is 21 or older, reflecting mature content in both films, including graphic violence and extended psychological horror sequences that go well beyond typical PG-13 anime fare.
Is the New Evangelion Series a Sequel, a Reboot, or Something Else?
Studio Khara has only described it as a “completely new series” under the working title Next Genesis, without confirming whether it continues the Rebuild timeline, revisits the 1995 original, or exists in its own separate continuity. No plot details, premiere date, or episode count have been confirmed as of July 2026.
Will Hideaki Anno Have Any Role in the New Series?
He is not credited as a writer or director, a first for the franchise, but he still leads Studio Khara as its president, so some oversight remains plausible even without a byline on the finished scripts.
