Japan’s Studio Ghibli says it won’t be releasing any commercials or trailers for co-founder and animator Hayao Miyazaki’s final film How Do You Live?
The forthcoming film, which premieres in the country on 14 July, is one of the country’s most anticipated films in years, and is expected to serve as a poignant send-off for the genius creator behind animated classics including Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and My Neighbour Totoro.
How Do You Live? is loosely inspired by Japanese author Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 novel of the same name. It is based on a coming-of-age story about a young boy whose father died when he was young.
To date, Studio Ghibli has released few details about the project, and isn’t planning on releasing a trailer ahead of its release.
In an interview with Japanese magazine Bungei Shunji last week, Toshio Suzuki, Ghibli’s lead producer, confirmed that the studio will remain quiet about the film until it comes out.
“As part of company operations, over the years Ghibli has wanted people to come see the movies we’ve made. So we’ve thought about that and done a lot of different things for that purpose – but this time we were like, ‘Eh, we don’t need to do that,’” he said.
“Doing the same thing you’ve done before, over and over, you get tired of it. So we wanted to do something different.”
Suzuki also compared Miyazaki’s approach to that of Hollywood’s marketing plans.
“There’s an American movie – ah, I almost said the title out loud! – coming out this summer around the same time [as How Do You Live?],” he said.
“They’ve made three trailers for it, and released them one at a time. If you watch all three, you know everything that’s going to happen in that movie. So how do moviegoers feel about that? There must be people, who, after watching all the trailers, don’t want to actually go see the movie. So, I wanted to do the opposite of that.”
Miyazaki’s film Princess Mononoke was the first animated film ever to win the Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year.
His 2001 film Spirited Away also became the highest-grossing film in Japanese history, winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
US and UK release dates for How Do You Live? have yet to be announced.
