Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki has shared an update on Hayao Miyazaki’s next film, Kimi-tachi wa Dō Ikiru ka (How Do You Live?), revealing that the animators have completed 36 minutes so far.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Suzuki, who has produced a number of Miyazaki’s biggest hits in his filmography, admitted that he initially expressed reservations about the director coming out of retirement to take on a new project.
[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2015/11/23/why-miyazakis-films-are-important-to-animation-ign-anime-club”]
“Many directors make films on and on and on throughout their careers as they grow older,” he said through a translator. “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. 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 confirmed that the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which has affected multiple film and television productions across the globe, has not impacted the studio’s progress on Miyazaki’s ambitious feature film, though he expects it could still take another three years to complete the animation.
“The film that Hayao Miyazaki’s working on at the moment is a big, fantastical story,” he explained. “We are still hand-drawing everything, but it takes us more time to complete a film because we’re drawing more frames. So, there are more drawings to draw than before. Back when we were making [1988’s] My Neighbor Totoro, we only had eight animators. Totoro we made in eight months. [For] the current film that Hayao Miyazaki is working on, we have 60 animators, but we are only able to come up with one minute of animation in a month. That means 12 months a year, you get 12 minutes worth of movie.”
He added, “Actually, 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.”
[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=the-best-anime-series-on-netflix-right-now&captions=true”]
Earlier this year, Studio Ghibli announced that a second film was being developed alongside Miyazaki’s coming-of-age fantasy adventure. Suzuki confirmed that Miyazaki’s son, Gorō Miyazaki, is responsible for the second project, which he described as a computer-generated animation “based on a book or story from England” about “a very wise girl.”
If you want to get acquainted with the Miyazaki family’s anime classics before these new works join their back catalogue, a number of titles from Studio Ghibli’s library will be available to stream on HBO Max when it launches later this month.
[poilib element=”accentDivider”]
Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
Source: IGN.com Studio Ghibli Hopes Hayao Miyazaki's Next Film Will Be Completed in 3 Years