Miyazaki Hayao’s Final Film ‘How Do You Live’: Maximum Secrecy to Be Maintained Until Release
variety.comMark Schilling Japan Correspondent Studio Ghibli, the iconic Japanese animation studio, will maintain a cloud of secrecy for as long as possible around “How Do You Live,” the final film from maestro Miyazaki Hayao (“Spirited Away,” “Howl’s Moving Castle,” “Princess Mononoke”).
The new movie is scheduled to arrive in theaters in Japan on July 14, but Studio Ghibli and its partners will do away with pre-release advertising and advanced information.
To date it has released only a single enigmatic poster of a bird. In a long interview with Bungei Shunju magazine now available on YouTube, Studio Ghibli president and producer Suzuki Toshio explained the unusual strategy as a ploy to whet the appetites of fans.
They have been denied a new film by Miyazaki film since the 2013 “The Wind Rises.” “They’ll want to see for themselves what the film is about,” Suzuki said. “And to do that, they’ll have to go a theater.” When the magazine’s editor mentioned that the film is reportedly based on “How Do You Live,” a 1937 coming-of-age novel by Genzaburo Yoshino with a young male protagonist, Suzuki said that Miyazaki “only borrowed the title,” implying that plot descriptions available on the Internet based on summaries of Yoshino’s novel may be incorrect.
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