Hayao Miyazaki isn’t as confident as his compatriots that his final film – How Do You Live? – will connect with audiences.
Hayao Miyazaki is, of course, a legendary Studio Ghibli filmmaker whose final film is being released in a fittingly unconventional fashion. Ghibli has announced that his final film, How Do You Live? will be released without any marketing or promotion whatsoever.
It’s a typically weird and subversive manoeuvre from a studio that’s known for making weird and subversive films. We’re also hoping that it works out because we can’t be the only ones who’d love to see more films take this approach where the lack of marketing is the marketing.
Whilst Ghibli as a studio seems outwardly relaxed with this adventurous approach, the Spirited Away director (who has been such a hugely influential presence at Ghibli throughout the years) has admitted that he’s a little anxious, telling Oricon News, “I wonder if it’s okay without advertising…’ I’m really saying. I’m getting worried.”
When the decision to release the film without marketing was first announced, Toshio Suzuki, Miyazaki’s right-hand man at Ghibli, took a little jab at the Hollywood marketing machine, stating, “there’s an American movie — ah, I almost said the title out loud! — coming out this summer around the same time [as How Do You Live?]…. 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.”
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