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Ghibli Museum PR Head: No New Ghibli Film in 2012

Junichi Nishioka, Studio Ghibli's former public relations head and Ghibli Museum's current public relations head, acknowledged on March 27 that Ghibli will not release a feature film this year. During his talk at the Kyōsō Open Forum in Yokohama, Nishioka noted (at the 44-minute mark) that studio co-founders Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata are both working on feature films simultaneously — the first time that this has happened since My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies opened in 1988 as a double feature.

Both Miyazaki and Takahata have already suggested in the past that their films are more than a year from completion, but Nishioka indicated that there is a possibility that their schedules will slip beyond next year. Nishioka also reiterated Miyazaki's words that Studio Ghibli's fortunes are riding on Miyazaki's next film, and he said with a laugh that if these films are not completed, Studio Ghibli will fold.

Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki had hinted in 2009 that Takahata was working on a project based on the classic Japanese folktale Taketori Monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) in the style of the classical Japanese scroll Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga. Takahata himself mentioned Taketori Monogatari in August of that year. Suzuki asked Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (The Last Emperor, The Wings of Honneamise, Appleseed film, Le Chevalier D'Eon) to cooperate on Takahata's new work during a Tokyo event on March 13, but Suzuki's response was not made public.

Suzuki also said last August that the new work of the studio's other famous co-founder, Hayao Miyazaki, is an "autobiography." However, Suzuki's vague phrasing in Japanese did not indicate if the work is Miyazaki's own autobiography, or an adaptation of another person's autobiography.

Source: Yomiuri via Nausicaa.net