Well, here’s an early Christmas present: Studio Ghibli has just popped a new movie under our cinematic trees.
The film, with the working title How Do You Live?, is due to be released next summer, according to the official Ghibli Twitter feed. It’ll be in cinemas in Japan on July 14, 2023 and out worldwide after that.
It’s written and directed by the studio’s founder, the legendary Miyazaki Hayao, and adapted from the seminal Japanese young adult novel of the same name.
— スタジオジブリ STUDIO GHIBLI (@JP_GHIBLI) December 13, 2022
Published in 1937, and recently given its first English translation with an introduction by Neil Gaiman, Genzaburō Yoshino’s How Do You Live? tells the coming-of-age story of a 15-year-old boy who is mentored by his uncle in spirituality and all the big questions of life when his dad dies. The older man’s advice is imparted via the pages of a journal.
Despite its founder’s semi-retirement in recent years – How Do You Live? is Miyazaki’s first directorial project since 2013’s The Wind Rises – Studio Ghibli has been going from strength to strength, with a new theme park in Toyko and a buzzy theatrical adaptation of My Neighbor Totoro winning raves in London.
Will it How Do You Live? be another Ghibli shoo-in onto the canon of great animations? Find out next summer.
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