Could a new Miyaza­ki movie be on its way?

Leg­endary Stu­dio Ghi­b­li direc­tor, Hayao Miyaza­ki, has hint­ed – hint­ed! – that he may once more com­ing out of retire­ment. The Acad­e­my Award win­ner, long-dubbed the ​‘Walt Dis­ney of Japan’, has been say­ing he will retire from film­mak­ing since 1998. Princess Mononoke was sup­pos­ed­ly going be his last movie. Six movies lat­er, he pro­claimed that ​‘This time I am quite seri­ous,’ on fin­ish­ing the 2013 World War Two-era biopic, The Wind Also Ris­es. He even held a 90-minute retire­ment press con­fer­ence ffs.

Yet speak­ing on an NHK tele­vi­sion pro­gramme in Japan, it sounds like he’ll be back – much to the undoubt­ed excite­ment of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li fans world­wide. He has been work­ing on a CG short, Kemushi no Boro or Boro The Cater­pil­lar, for the Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um in Mita­ka. The film is based on a sto­ry he has been devel­op­ing for 20 odd years about a tiny cater­pil­lar that ​‘may be eas­i­ly squished between your fin­gers’. Accord­ing to the NHK tele­vi­sion spe­cial, Miyaza­ki is not sat­is­fied with the result­ing short and has pro­posed to extend it into a ful­ly fledged fea­ture film.

Dur­ing the pro­gramme named, ​‘The Man who is not Done: Hayao Miyaza­ki’, he spoke about shar­ing a pro­pos­al with Stu­dio Ghi­b­li vet­er­an pro­duc­er, Toshio Suzu­ki, say­ing, ​“I haven’t said any­thing to my wife yet… When I do, though, I’m ready to die in the mid­dle [of pro­duc­tion]”. Noth­ing con­crete has been estab­lished. There has been no stu­dio announce­ment or offi­cial release date con­firmed. But the 75-year-old has esti­mat­ed that the film will take an esti­mat­ed five years to com­plete. (Per­fect tim­ing, inci­den­tal­ly, for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.)

With Suzuki’s tan­ta­lis­ing com­ments about Miyaza­ki as ​‘a per­son who will keep mak­ing films until he dies’ and sto­ry­boards appar­ent­ly under­way, we have fin­gers and toes crossed for one final ani­mat­ed mas­ter­piece from the Stu­dio Ghi­b­li god­head himself.