A new Bloomberg deep dive into Studio Ghibli finds the legendary animation house at a crossroads: Hayao Miyazaki is 85, his son, Goro Miyazaki, is being eyed as a potential creative heir, and Kenichi Yoda has taken over as the studio’s new CEO.
Yet, despite the uncertainty surrounding its future, the studio insists it has no interest in becoming an IP factory, churning out sequels or following the industrialized anime model. Its next feature remains a mystery.
Meanwhile, Goro has directed a new 15-minute short, “A Night in the Valley of the Witches,” while Hayao continues to loom over every creative decision — to the point where Goro says bringing in an outside filmmaker would be “absolutely impossible” “as long as … Hayao is around.”
However, the biggest mystery remains Hayao himself: after “The Boy and the Heron” won the Oscar, Ghibli still hasn’t announced his next project, even though, according to Yoda, he “comes to the studio every day.” What is he doing there? Nobody seems to know. “Only he knows exactly what he’s working on.”
Miyazaki has announced his retirement more than once and is currently — as far as we know — unretired. What exactly is he doing there? That appears to be the great mystery. Miyazaki is still creating something, but the people around him seem to be just as much in the dark as everyone else.
And yet, Miyazaki keeps showing up. Bloomberg’s reporters, quite unsuccessfully, tried to catch a glimpse of him at his nearby home, with the assumption that he’d be back at the studio on Monday morning. For now, Ghibli’s future remains, as the article puts it, “inseparable from Hayao,” and whatever he’s creating behind those studio doors is apparently his secret alone.
What we do know? “The Boy and the Heron” premiered, which led to Miyazaki saying he was not retiring and was, indeed, working on a new film. Some reviews for “The Boy and the Heron” called it his “swan song,” but Studio Ghibli VP Junichi Nishioka later said that it would not be Miyazaki’s final film. Goro, via ComicBook.com, added that his dad was currently working on something that is “looking like an action-adventure-type movie, nostalgic and reminiscent of the old days.”
So something is brewing, and given Miyazaki’s intensely solitary way of working, we’ll only know what it is once he tells us what it is. Not even his closest confidants seem to know.
The film is set to star Hugh Jackman, while Hugh Grant and Owen Cooper are circling roles. Jack Thorne, who is red-hot these days thanks to his work on the acclaimed Netflix series "Adolescence.”