Hayao Miyazaki’s highly anticipated film will be released in North America later this year, GKIDS has announced.
The producer and distributor of the award-winning animation has announced the acquisition of Academy Award winner Miyazaki’s first film in 10 years, 2013’s ‘The Wind Rises’. Originally titled “How Do You Live?” in Japan, Miyazaki’s feature film will be known as “The Boy and the Heron” in the United States
Miyazaki is the co-founder of the animation house Studio Ghibli. “The Boy and the Heron” is written and directed by Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki. The film is an original story inspired by Yoshino Genzaburo’s 1937 story about a boy who comes of age while living with his uncle after his father’s death. Miyazaki dedicates the film to his nephew.
Longtime collaborator Joe Hisaishi is behind the film’s score. GKIDS will release “The Boy and the Heron” theatrically in North America later this year. The rights deal marks the continuation of GKIDS’ longstanding relationship with Ghibli.
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“Hayao Miyazaki is a living legend in cinema, as evidenced by his Oscar win for ‘Spirited Away’ and his two Oscar nominations for ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ and ‘The Wind Rises,'” he said GKIDS president David Jesteadt. “It has been 10 years since the world has seen a new film from Miyazaki-san, and GKIDS is so proud and honored to unveil its latest, highly anticipated masterpiece in North America.”
In an unprecedented marketing move, Studio Ghibli has not released any images, trailers, advertisements, or synopses for the hand-drawn animated film ‘The Boy and the Heron’ ahead of its July 14 premiere in Japan. In line with this policy, GKIDS will not be releasing any further details or marketing materials at this time.
GKIDS handles the North American distribution for the acclaimed Studio Ghibli film library across all theatrical, home video, digital and streaming platforms. The company has released Studio Ghibli’s latest films in theaters nationwide, including the Academy Award-nominated “The Tale of The Princess Kaguya,” “When Marnie Was There,” “From Up on Poppy Hill,” and more. Still. .
Since 2017, GKIDS has produced the annual Studio Ghibli Fest, a monthly national theater program of showings of Ghibli films in over 800 theaters across the country. The series continues this year with a focus on Hayao Miyazaki films.
Studio Ghibli co-founder Suzuki addressed the lack of promotion for ‘The Boy and the Heron,’ saying earlier this year in a translated interview, ‘As part of the company’s operations, over the course of For years Ghibli has wanted people to come and see the movies that we’ve made. So we thought about it and did a lot of different things for that purpose, but this time we were like, ‘Eh, we don’t need to do that.’ Doing the same things you did before, over and over again, gets tired.So we wanted to do something different.
Suzuki added, “There’s an American film – ah, I almost said the title out loud! — due out this summer around the same time (as “How Do You Live?”). They made three trailers for it and released them one at a time. If you watch all three, you know everything that’s going to happen in that movie. So how do viewers feel about it? There must be people who, after seeing all the trailers, don’t want to go see the movie. So, I wanted to do the opposite of that.
