Hayao Miyazaki’s new film has years left of animation to complete

Since Hayao Miyazaki announced in 2016 he was coming out of retirement to follow up The Wind Rises (2013) with How Do You Live?, Studio Ghibli producer and general manager Toshio Suzuki says a team of sixty animators finished thirty-six minutes of film, according to IndieWire. This is compared to Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro (1988), which took eight animators eight months to complete; Suzuki says at one minute of hand-drawn animation per month and twelve minutes’ worth of movie a year, How Do You Live? will be done in three years. It is an adaptation of Yoshino Genzaburo’s 1937 coming-of-age tale.

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HBO Max acquires Studio Ghibli library

Warner Media announced Thursday its acquisition of all twenty-one Studio Ghibli films for their streaming service, HBO Max, which will mark the first time the Japanese animation house’s filmography has been licensed to a streaming platform, according to The New York Times. Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Princess Mononoke (1997), Castle in the Sky (1986), as well as The Wind Rises (2014), to name a few, will be available to stream next fall. Along with NET, PBS, and HBO’s Sesame Street (1969-), HBO Max hopes to compete against Disney Plus and Netflix in the children’s market because family subscriptions are the most consistent.