Studio Ghibli, best known for films such as “Spirited Away,” “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “Ponyo,” released a teaser to announce a brand new project with Lucasfilm, the studio behind “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones.”
The Japanese animation company tweeted the mysterious video teaser on Thursday, only showing the Studio Ghibli and Lucasfilm logos with no background music.
Headed by directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, Studio Ghibli took home the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for “Spirited Away” in 2002 and have garnered an additional five Academy Award nominations for “Howl’s Moving Castle,” “The Tale of The Princess Kaguya,” “The Wind Rises,” “The Red Turtle” and “When Marnie Was There.”
This isn’t the first time Lucasfilm has teamed up with Japanese animators. The studio partnered with seven Japanese animation studios, including Studio Trigger and Kamikaze Douga, for the first season of the Disney Plus anthology “Star Wars: Visions” to give nine short films set in the “Star Wars” universe anime aesthetics.
“The goal with ‘Visions’ was always that we wanted this to be authentic Japanese anime,” executive producer James Waugh told The Hollywood Reporter. “We wanted it to be a true expression from these individual creators in a process that they’re used to. The last thing we wanted to do was be a Western studio that went with our ideas and then really leaned on them for their aesthetic. They were creating stories and concepts that could only come from their unique cultural perspective.”
The first season of “Star Wars: Visions” was released on Sept. 22, 2021. A release date for the second season has yet to be finalized.
NextShark has reached out to Lucasfilm for further comment on its partnership with Studio Ghibli.
In other Studio Ghibli news, fans were stunned to spot a man resembling Miyazaki wandering the newly opened Ghibli Park.
