Studio Ghibli announces North American release window for Miyazaki’s final film

After announcing a little over a month ago that acclaimed director Hayao Miyazaki’s final film wouldn’t receive any pre-release trailers, Studio Ghibli has finally announced that the director’s 12th project will be released in North American theaters later this year. While the Japanese title of the film is How Do You Live?, all of us on the other side of the pond will know it as The Boy and The Heron.

THE BOY AND THE HERON
Written & Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Score by Joe Hisaishi

In North American theatres later this year.#君たちはどう生きるか#宮﨑駿 pic.twitter.com/PPnjFTMBFS

— Studio Ghibli (@GhibliUSA) July 14, 2023

This is excellent news as there was reason to believe Studio Ghibli would take a year or more to localize the project for different territories. In the past, almost every single Miyazaki-directed project has taken around seven months to a year or more to hit US theaters. This being the legendary animator’s last film, I suppose Studio Ghibli wanted people to see it as soon as possible.

We don’t have any other details about whether or not the film will be receiving an English dub or if there will be options for watching it with subtitles or not. What we could expect is an IMAX release as the project got a surprise announcement for the format this past week in Japan. That would be exquisite.

At the very least, if you’d like to be caught up on all of Miyazaki’s films, why not check out Flixist’s own retrospective series: Miyazaki Marathon?