In a recent interview with Japanese magazine Bungei Shunji, Studio Ghibli co-founder and producer Toshio Suzuki confirmed that Hayao Miyazaki’s highly anticipated feature film How Do You Live? will not receive the deluge of trailers, sneak peeks, cast and music announcements that have become the expected course of movie marketing. Due to open in Japan on July 14 and reportedly Miyazaki’s final film, so far all fans have seen from the novel adaptation is one stark poster featuring a rather mysterious character in a bird mask.
“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,’” Suzuki explained.
“… There’s an American movie — ah, I almost said the title out loud! — coming out this summer around the same time. 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.”
What we do know is that How Do You Live? is, according to Ghibli, “a grand fantasy” based on the 1937 book by Yoshino Genzaburo . The story centers on a teenage boy’s experiences growing up after the loss of his father, as his beloved uncle keeps a diary of their talks about emotional challenges, life, relationships and the world.
Suzuki told the magazine that it was his longtime colleague and global animation legend Miyazaki’s reaction to the enigmatic first poster that sealed the minimalist marketing strategy: “I’ve been involved with our movies since Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), but this was the first time Hayao Miyazaki genuinely praised me. ‘Suzuki-san, this is amazing. This is the best poster you’ve ever made,’ he said. I felt like that was a hint, so I decided ‘Let’s go with just this one poster for the marketing.’ So, no trailers or TV commercials at all … No newspaper ads either. Deep down, I think this is what moviegoers latently desire.”
[Source: Bungei Shunji via The Hollywood Reporter]
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