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Hayao Miyazaki's Next Ghibli Film Has 36 Minutes Completed Despite COVID-19

Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki told Entertainment Weekly in an article published on Wednesday that the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has not affected Ghibli's progress on Hayao Miyazaki's next feature film, Kimi-tachi wa Dō Ikiru ka (How Do You Live?). He added that the staff has completed 36 minutes of the movie so far, and is hoping to finish it in the next three years. Suzuki noted that the film is a "big, fantastical story" that will take more time because the staff is drawing everything by hand.

Suzuki also confirmed that Hayao Miyazaki's son and anime director Goro Miyazaki (Tales from Earthsea, From Up On Poppy Hill) is working on a new CG anime film. Suzuki teased that the film is "based on a book or story from England... about a very wise girl."

Suzuki previously reported that Hayao Miyazaki's new film was about 15% complete at the end of October last year, after three and a half years of production. Miyazaki is now directing about one minute of animation per month. The Ghibli Museum's "Sketch, Flash, Spark! ~ From the Ghibli Forest Sketchbook" exhibition timeline clarifies that Miyazaki began drawing storyboards for the film in 2017.

Suzuki had stated in a Bungei Shunjū magazine essay published in March 2019 that Miyazaki is working on Kimi-tachi wa Dō Ikiru ka without a deadline to complete the film. Suzuki indicated that Studio Ghibli's works normally have set production schedules. In an earlier television special that revealed the film project, Miyazaki had presented a proposed schedule for finishing the film by 2019, but Suzuki indicated that the studio is no longer following that plan.

Miyazaki derived the film's title from writer Genzaburō Yoshino's 1937 masterpiece of the same name. He added that this book is a story that has great meaning to the protagonist of his film. Yoshino's book centers around a youth named KOPERU and his uncle, and through KOPERU's spiritual growth, it discusses how to live as human beings.

Studio Ghibli previously reported on January 1 that it was continuing to work on two new films in 2020. Suzuki said in 2017 that Hayao Miyazaki's next film is a hand-drawn "action-adventure fantasy," and that Goro Miyazaki was producing a CG work.

Goro Miyazaki made his directorial debut with the 2006 film Tales from Earthsea. He then directed the 2011 anime film From Up On Poppy Hill and the CG-animated Ronja the Robber's Daughter anime series.

Source: Entertainment Weekly (Nick Romano)