Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki will come out of retirement for one final film with the anime production house.
After retiring in 2013 following the release of his whimsical Academy Awarded-nominated film The Wind Rises, the 80-year-old director will return to Studio Ghibli for his final film, How Do You Live?.
The film will take inspiration from the 1937 novel of the same name by Japanese author Yoshino Genzaburō. A coming-of-age story about a 15-year-old boy, nicknamed ‘Copper’, in 1930s Japan.
Animation work for the film commenced in July 2016. How Do You Live? was made public in October 2017, with Studio Ghibli announcing the film’s title. The film’s producer, Toshio Suzuki, said that Hayao Miyazaki is working on the film for his grandson as his final message: “Grandpa is moving onto the next world soon but he is leaving behind this film.”
There is currently no release date. Suzuki said that the studio was working with no deadlines, like 2013’s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, which took eight years to make. The film will be entirely hand-drawn, with Hayao working on most of the frames himself.
In a new profile with the New York Times, Miyazaki was asked why he decided to come out of retirement. To which he said,“because I want to.”
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