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Hayao Miyazaki has teased Studio Ghibli's next movie, calling the upcoming release a return to "big, fantastical" stories. The Ghibli co-founder (who directed such iconic movies as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle) gave the update on his next movie – titled How Do You Live? – to Entertainment Weekly.
"The film that Hayao Miyazaki's working on at the moment is a big, fantastical story," Miyazaki said through a translator. Colour us excited.
The release will be Miyazaki's first feature-length movie after retiring from the industry in 2013 following the completion of The Wind Rises. Miyazaki announced his return in 2016 and went on to release the CGI short film Boro the Caterpillar in 2018.
Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki was also on hand to tease the upcoming movie and what to expect from Miyazaki's return. "When Miyazaki came back and said that I want to make a film again, I actually said that's not a great idea because he's achieved so much already," he said. "You can't come back and do something that you've already done in the past, you have to do something different. One of the ideas that came out from that was, why not spend more time and spend more money [to make a film]? So, that's one of the new approaches."
Suzuki added that, while the release has not been affected by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, we should not expect to see How Do You Live? for a few more years. "We are still hand-drawing everything, but it takes us more time to complete a film because we're drawing more frames," he said, going on to explain how a minute's worth of animation takes around a month to produce. "We've been working on this film for three years, so that means we have 36 minutes completed so far. We're hoping it will finish in the next three years."
Studio Ghibli's output is currently available, for the most part, on Netflix in the UK, and will be made available on HBO Max in the US from May 27.
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