Perhaps you’ve just binged the entire Studio Ghibli catalog on Netflix. Perhaps you’ve exhausted your Ghibli Blu-ray collection. In any case, all true Studio Ghibli fans have had one singular question gnawing at them since Ghibli’s last release in 2014...What is the next movie from the prolific Studio Ghibli going to be? Here’s everything we know...
In 2016 Hayao Miyazaki famously came out of retirement (...again) to begin work on some secret projects and so began chatterings of what masterpiece Miyazaki san would be cooking up next.
At the beginning of 2020 the film studio announced that it is currently working on not one, but TWO new movies. They made their declaration during their annual New Year’s statement (summarized below)
"...Studio Ghibli continues to work on two new films. Also, Ghibli Park has started in earnest, so we hope to be able to deliver more exciting this year. Thank you very much for Studio Ghibli and Studio Ghibli works this year.”
The renowned animation studio has been fairly secretive about the two new films, but here is everything we know so far (about one of the releases at least)
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1. We know it is being directed by the iconic Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki and has been in development over the last couple of years.
- 2. The feature is called Kimi-tachi wa Dō Ikiru ka (How Do You Live?) It will feature a male protagonist and is a coming-of-age fantasy story that follows 15-year-old Koperu and his uncle.
- 3. The movie’s plot is based off of a 1937 novel by Yoshino Genzaburō.
- 4. Kimi-tachi wa Dō Ikiru ka was originally slated for completion in time for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
- 5. The production moving slower than expected (currently as of the writing of this article, the film is only about ~15% complete), producer Toshio Suzuki is now projecting that it will be released in 2021 or 2022.