If you noticed that you haven’t seen a single bit of advertising for How Do You Live?, the film that is set to be Hayao Miyazaki’s last, you’re not alone. As it turns out, Toho is releasing the film without a single piece of promotional material – no trailer, no stills, no cast, nothing.
As Hayao Miyazaki’s last feature – the 82-year-old legend and titan of animation announced his retirement (or at least most recent claim) a decade ago following The Wind Rises – How Do You Live? will undoubtedly be one of the most important cinematic events of the year. But the hype will have to come more organically from his loyal fanbase, as they only have one measly teaser poster (embedded below) to go off of. We don’t even know what it’s about!
In a new interview with Japanese magazine Bungei Shunji (via The Hollywood Reporter), longtime Hayao Miyazaki producer Toshio Suzuki defended the decision of releasing the director’s last movie without any typical publicity. “As part of company operations, over the years Ghibli has wanted people to come see the movies we’ve made. So we’ve thought about that and done a lot of different things for that purpose — but this time we were like, ‘Eh, we don’t need to do that.’…Doing the same thing you’ve done before, over and over, you get tired of it. So we wanted to do something different.” In a time when even teasers get teasers, Studio Ghibli is certainly hitting that mark on “different.” Referring to an American movie he won’t name, the producer shamed their campaign, saying, “They’ve made three trailers for it, and released them one at a time. If you watch all three, you know everything that’s going to happen in that movie. So how do moviegoers feel about that? There must be people, who, after watching all the trailers, don’t want to actually go see the movie. So, I wanted to do the opposite of that.”
Even the cast list of Hayao Miyazaki’s last picture is unknown, but judging by the talent he has gotten for his past works, How Do You Live? will hopefully garner a massive roster for his farewell.
Hayao Miyazaki’s last film, How Do You Live?, will come to its native Japan on July 14th, while no other release dates have been announced.
Are you looking forward to Hayao Miyazaki’s last film? How do you feel about the lack of promotion? Let us know!
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