It’s been a decade since Hayao Miyazaki’s last film, ‘The Wind Rises’, and he’s come out of his retirement (after x times of saying so) just to create his twelfth feature film—‘The Boy and the Heron.’
Renowned Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli has just released its latest film just this past weekend, and who would’ve known, right? Well, Miyazaki’s last feature film is devoid of any marketing campaign you’d usually see on the internet—no trailers, no promotional material, nothing.
Nothing, but just a poster.
This move was deliberate, according to Studio Ghibli General Manager and co-founder Toshio Suzuki, for viewers to watch the famed director’s film without any preconceived ideas. “A poster and a title – that’s all we got when we were children. I enjoyed trying to imagine what a movie was about, and I wanted to bring that feeling back,” said Suzuki to Japanese broadcaster NHK.
Even with this unprecedented way of releasing and “promoting” an upcoming movie, it still earned Studio Ghibli its biggest weekend opening ever— ‘The Boy and the Heron’ grossed $13.2 million (¥1.83 billion yen) from Friday to Sunday, overtaking ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ debut of ¥1.48 billion yen in 2004. The film debuted with $1.7 million from 44 screens and had set a new record for giant screen operator IMAX.
While the film is yet to have its international release, Japanese media have reported that the film offers an “experience of ‘truly astounding’ visual beauty and deep philosophical messages,” and Time Out Japan, in particular, praised the film as “a mature, complex masterpiece, weaving together the director’s past, present and future—a beautiful enigma that promises to be worth the wait.”
‘The Boy and the Heron,’ known in Japan as ‘How Do You Live?,’ is a film about a boy living in World War II Japan, who discovers a brand-new world hidden in an abandoned tower and meets a grey heron.
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