It was directed by Sunghoo Park from a screenplay by Hiroshi Seko, and stars Megumi Ogata, Kana Hanazawa, Mikako Komatsu, Kōki Uchiyama, Tomokazu Seki, Yuichi Nakamura, and Takahiro Sakurai.
Originally intended as an arc of the animated television series Jujutsu Kaisen, studio MAPPA changed the format of it during discussion.
The staff decided to expand the narrative from that of the original manga by adding new scenes focused on Yuta's mentor Satoru Gojo and the antagonist Suguru Geto.
Given the large budget for the movie, MAPPA aimed to make more appealing fight sequences than the ones from the animated television series.
However, a teacher at Tokyo Jujutsu Technical High, Satoru Gojo, recruits Yuta to join the school in November 2016, thus saving him.
The man behind the attack was Suguru Geto, a previous student and old friend of Gojo, who defected from the school and killed over a hundred innocent people on a mission.
Geto declares war to activate a portal to the under-world: he will release a thousand Curses upon the city to remove non-sorcerer humans, as he believes them to be undeserving and beneath sorcerers.
Geto's real reason for the war, however, is to distract Gojo so he can kill Yuta and add Rika to his collection of cursed spirits.
Gojo confirms that Yuta was the one who inadvertently cursed Rika through un-specified ties to royal bloodlines within the hierarchy of Japan's caste system, rather than the other way around, by being unable to accept her death.
However, the idea was scrapped and the anime began, with Yuji Itadori's introduction to the world of sorcerers and curses similar based on the Jujutsu Kaisen manga.
[18] In the original format, Park would adapt the series' first three episodes to develop Yuji and then replace him with Okkotsu, but that idea was discarded.
Seko commented that, for the movie to fill two hours, he would need to add new material, such as Okkotsu's past and the relationship between Gojo and Geto.
[24] This was mainly because the movie was based on a single manga volume, and the team aimed to make a long film rather than a thirty-minute work.
MAPPA CEO Manabu Otsuka said that the team was impressed by the original Jujutsu Kaisen 0 and believed the fans would like to see it adapted.
He considers the new protagonist, Yuta Okkotsu, as a representative teenager possessed by loneliness, in this case caused by being beset by Rika's curse.
However, Park claimed the staff did not want to give such characters too much screen time, due to how the narrative primarily focuses on Yuta and Rika.
Another addition to the movie, not present in the original work, was the four consecutive Black Flashes that Nanami mentioned in an interview in the TV series.
In June 2021, the "Juju Fes 2021" MAPPA revealed to the audience the first poster of Yuta and Rika, with Akutami himself drawing his own rendition to celebrate.
[59] Crunchyroll, in association with Funimation, acquired the rights to the film, which theatrically premiered in North America on March 18, 2022, in over 1,500 theaters.
Besides the regular version, a special edition featuring interviews, live footage of the film's premiere, and a commentary track was also released.
[84][85] The film was released in the United States and Canada on March 18, 2022, and was projected to gross $8–13 million from 2,336 theaters in its opening weekend.
"[93] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 71 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
Yuta's relationship with Rika's Curse was praised for giving the former a more unpredictable characterization and the horror provided by the latter though Anime News Network felt it stopped being the main focus of the film in later sequences.
[95][96] Movie news website We Got This Covered compared Yuta's Curse with themes of trauma,[97] while Polygon instead saw a person not being able to accept the death of his friend.
[98] Anime UK News enjoyed the handling of Yuta's arc and how Gojo's character is explored more in depth in the film than in the original series.
[99] Siliconera and the Los Angeles Times, among others, praised the film for being accessible to every new viewer as, instead of focusing on the returning Itadori's group, it deals with newcomer Yuta, and the minor characters from the television series are also explored.
[95] Otaku USA lamented the prequel story was only used for a movie, rather than a mini-series, as he saw the cast as likable enough to carry more screentime, with special focus on Geto, whose entire background and role make him an appealing villain.
[104] Polygon praised MAPPA's most appealing animation scenes, mainly those involving Yuta and Suguru Geto, and pointed out that they are superior to most of their past works such as The God of High School.
[105] The Guardian enjoyed both the animation as well as how it mixes with the soundtrack in order to produce scenes composed of an "adrenaline-pumping showdown between good and evil, as a web of painstakingly detailed monsters of all kinds spring into gory action".
[99] In 2022, the film won the Animage's Anime Grand Prix poll, with Yuta and Gojo taking second and third best male characters awards, behind Tengen Uzui from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.