The mysterious new film from legendary animation studio Studio Ghibli and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki will be titled The Boy and the Heron in North America, according to an announcement from distributor GKIDS. The movie came out on Friday in Japan under the title Kimitachi wa Do Ikiruka (translated as How Do You Live?), but GKIDS is only saying that it will be out in theaters “later this year.”
Studio Ghibli’s mysterious new film will be out in North America later this year
Studio Ghibli’s mysterious new film will be out in North America later this year
Ahead of the film’s release, Studio Ghibli only shared the Japanese title and a couple of images of some kind of bird-like creature — there hasn’t even been a trailer — so there are a lot of unknowns about what the film might actually be about. That was an intentional strategy.
“A poster and a title — that’s all we got when we were children,” Studio Ghibli co-founder and president Toshio Suzuki said to Japanese broadcaster NHK, according to The Japan Times. “I enjoyed trying to imagine what a movie was about, and I wanted to bring that feeling back.”
It sounds like GKIDS plans to follow suit; the distributor said that it “will not release any further details or marketing materials at this time.” Now that the film has been released in Japan, however, the premise will probably start trickling out. Hopefully we don’t have to wait too much longer for the movie to come to other countries so we can see it for ourselves.
The Boy and the Heron is Miyazaki’s first movie in 10 years and is apparently his final film. But given that he came out of retirement to make it — 2013’s The Wind Rises was supposed to be the filmmaker’s last movie — we’ll have to wait and see if it’s the actual conclusion to his career.