‘Spirited Away’ animator Hayao Miyazaki to make new film – studio

TOKYO, Japan – Oscar-winning Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, who announced in 2013 that he would stop making films, is coming out of retirement to do a new movie, his studio announced Friday, May 19.

“Miyazaki decided to retract his retirement and to make a feature-length animation film,” production company Studio Ghibli said on its website.

The studio said that the director, now 76, “found a subject worth turning into” a movie, but added: “This will truly be his final film considering his age.”

Miyazaki’s most famous works internationally have been Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, which helped him make the transition from an already widely acclaimed career in Japan to a far broader audience.

Spirited Away won the Oscar for best animated feature in 2003, the first Japanese film to do so, and also scooped the Golden Bear prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, among other major gongs.

He began his career in 1963 and his first feature-length film was The Castle of Cagliostro in 1979.

He gained critical acclaim and a cult following for Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind in 1984 and co-founded Studio Ghibli, which has become Japan’s premier animation studio. – Rappler.com