Studio Ghibli to Release Hayao Miyazaki’s Final Film in IMAX Format
Hayao Miyazaki’s last movie, currently named How Do You Live?, will be shown in IMAX theaters. This is a significant moment for Miyazaki and the animation studio he helped establish almost forty years ago. Anime News Network reports that the film will also be presented in Dolby Atmos, Dolby Cinema, and DTS:X formats upon its release in Japan on July 14th.
As Gizmodo points out, previous Studio Ghibli films did not receive the IMAX treatment during their original theatrical releases. When you add this to the fact How do you live? is meant to be Miyazaki’s swan song (or so the creator claims), you have an absolute cinematic event. One potential problem, however, is that the film doesn’t yet have an international release date, and it’s unclear whether a North American distributor could secure IMAX screens for How Do You Live? when and if it arrives outside of Japan. In recent weeks, the availability of IMAX screens has been a contentious issue in Hollywood, with Tom Cruise reportedly calling some theaters to convince them to show Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One instead of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
About how you live? are rare. Studio Ghibli has not released a trailer for the film or bought any TV spots. In fact, the only promotion it has done so far for How Do You Live? is the single poster released by the studio last month. The film is an original work, but is named after Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 novel of the same name. In interviews, Miyazaki has said that the book plays an influential role in the life of his film’s main character.
