With films like Princess Mononoke and My Neighbor Totoro, Hayao Miyazaki became too one of the most popular animation artists ever. 10 years ago his last work, How the wind is lifting, was published, after which the Japanese wanted to say goodbye to retirement. Finally, there was the announcement that he was shooting a final film for the legendary Studio Ghibli.
So far, there’s only one fancy poster of the upcoming Miyazaki project, titled How Do You Live?. It should stay that way.
Mysterious hype surrounding Hayao Miyazaki’s last film
As reported by the Hollywood Reporter, Studio Ghibli will not release any promotional material for the new Miyazaki before its Japanese theatrical release in July. About How Do You Live? so it will not a single picture or trailer in advance give to see. The plot is said to be inspired by the 1937 Japanese novel of the same name. That’s why it’s about the coming-of-age story of a boy after the death of his father.
Nevertheless, there is no information on how much Miyazaki is based on the plot. Nothing is known about the cast or speakers either. So far you can only look at this fancy poster with a bird:
Ghibli
In an interview with Japanese magazine Bungei Shunji, Studio Ghibli lead producer and Miyazaki’s right-hand man Toshio Suzuki stated that fans would like to see the film completely without prior knowledge in the cinema to experience for the first time:
There’s an American film – oh, I almost said the title out loud! – coming out around the same time this summer [wie How Do You Live?]. They made three trailers for it and released them one by one.
If you watch all three you will know everything that will happen in this movie. How do moviegoers think about it? There must be people who after watching all the trailers don’t really want to see the movie. So I wanted to do the opposite of that.
In the conversation, Suzuki also says that Miyazaki’s praise for the first poster for his upcoming film made him consider this unusual marketing strategy:
I’ve been involved in our films since Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), but Hayao Miyazaki really praised me for the first time. ‘Suzuki-san, this is incredible. This is the best poster you’ve ever made,’ he said. I felt like that was a clue, so I decided, ‘Let’s just use this one poster for marketing.’ So no trailers or TV commercials at all… No newspaper ads either. Deep down, I believe that’s what moviegoers want. When will Hayao Miyazaki’s new movie be in theaters?
How Do You Live? from the July 14, 2023 in the cinema. A German start date is not yet known.
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