@Hayao Miyazaki 

“The Boy and the Heron” may not be Hayao Miyazaki’s swan song after all, suggests Junichi Nishioka, the vice president of Studio Ghibli.

Miyazaki has already been pitching new ideas to his colleagues, according to Nishioka. The news came via an interview with Eli Glasner at the Toronto International Film Festival, where “The Boy and the Heron” had its recent premiere.

It’s unclear at this point just what those “new ideas” may be or whether they include plans for another feature-length animation.

“The Boy and the Heron” opened to theaters in Japan in July without the usual promotional campaign. Studio Ghibli merely teased fans with a short trailer and a brief synopsis that read: “A young boy named Mahito yearning for his mother ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead.

There, death comes to an end, and life finds a new beginning. A semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death, and creation, in tribute to friendship, from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki.

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Produced by Toshio Suzuki and with a musical score by Joe Hisaishi, “The Boy and the Heron” made its premiere in Toronto on September 7and is next headed to the New York Film Festival this fall. It is scheduled for general release in the United States of December 8, though some special previews will be screened beginning on November 22.



“The Boy and the Heron” is Miyazaki’s first feature since “The Wind Rises,” which was released in 2013. In a career spanning more than forty years, the 82-year-old Miyazaki became one of Japan’s most prolific filmmakers in the animation genre. He was a cofounder with Isao Takahata of Studio Ghibli, with produced many of his films, including “Castle in the Sky”(1986),” My Neighbor Totoro” (1988), “Princess Mononoke” (1997), “Spirited Away” (2001), “Howl’s Moving Castle” (2004), “Ponyo” (2008), and “The Wind Rises” (2013).

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