Hideaki Anno has apologized for the Evangelion 4.0 delay at a press event for his upcoming Godzilla film. While the media was asked not to bring up Eva, Anno opened the press conference by apologizing to fans for not having 4.0 out in a timely manner.
“First of all, I would like to apologize. I have kept you waiting for the new Evangelion for a very, very long time. I am deeply sorry.
To me, Evangelion is my soul; it is a work that scrapes off bits of my soul. The previous work, Evangelion Shin Gekijōban: Q, scraped me down until I wasn’t able to make anything anymore. Now I feel like I can continue working on Evangelion.”
The official title for the film in Japanese is Evangelion Shin Gekijōban :||. :|| is the symbol used in music to denote repetition at the end of a measure, so it may imply that Evangelion 4.0 brings us back to where the story began, contrasting with the American title for Evangelion 3.0, You Can (Not) Redo.
With the Evangelion 4.0 delay, no release date has been set, although if Anno is able to finally get back to working on it, we may see it sooner than we think.