It looks like the master is ready to return to his craft.
Earlier today, NHK aired a special, titled Owaranai Hito Miyazaki Hayao (The Man Who Is Not Done: Hayao Miyazaki), which focused on celebrated anime director Hayao Miyazaki. According to the special, Miyazaki wants to return to creating anime feature films, after his retirement in 2013.
Lately, the director has been helming Kemushi no Boro (Boro the Caterpillar), a CGI short that will screen exclusively at the Ghibli Museum. According to NHK’s special, though, Miyazaki wasn’t satisfied with producing Kemushi no Boro as a short film. He presented a project proposal for a feature-length film in August. Miyazaki commented on the matter, stating that if the feature would take five years to make, he’d be 80 by the end of production.
In his proposal, Miyazaki sugested that a feature-length film could be finished by 2019, in time for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Despite not receiving an official greenlight, Miyazaki’s already gone to work on the project, and plans to create storyboards for roughly 100 cuts of footage.
Studio Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki noted that Miyazaki will draw storyboards until the day he dies. Another employee added a bit of gallows humor, dryly stating that this would probably make the film a major hit.
Though Miyazaki retired from feature films after 2013’s The Wind Rises, he continues to work as a director. Kemushi no Boro is on track for a 2017 release. Miyazaki has been planning the story to the feature for nearly two decades, and describes it as “a story of a tiny, hairy caterpillar, so tiny that it may be easily squished between your fingers.”
Source: Anime News Network
