In 2013, it looked like we’d no longer be seeing any more full-length films from Hayao Miyazaki, the lyrical and masterful director of anime films such as Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, as he’d announced he’d be going into retirement. He did, however, still work on a short film following the announcement — “Kemushi no Boro,” or, translated, “Boro the Caterpillar,” which will supposedly be finished sometime next year.
And it seems like self-imposed artistic limitations haven’t been working so well for Miyazaki, for now the 76-year old director has decided to come out of retirement to turn it into a feature length film, Anime News Network reports. The news comes from a declaration from Miyazaki in a Japanese TV special, whose title translates to The Man Who Is Not Done.
The short, a CG animation project about a very small, hairy caterpillar, was based on an idea that’d been gestating for 20 years, and was made for the museum devoted to Miyazaki’s studio — the Ghibli Museum. But Miyazaki wanted more from it, and thought the story was worthy of a feature, and so he proposed — apparently all the way back in August — to flesh out the 12-minute short; he approximated the feature would be complete sometime in 2019. The project hasn’t been greenlit yet, but the director’s already begun storyboarding it.
Miyazaki’s last film was 2013’s The Wind Rises: