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Anime master Hayao Miyazaki is coming out of retirement to make one last film

Anime master Hayao Miyazaki is coming out of retirement to make one last film

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Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences' 2014 Governors Awards - Arrivals
Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Back in 2013, legendary Japanese animator and director Hayao Miyazaki announced he would be retiring; making no more feature-length films in order to concentrate on smaller projects. Well, it turns out you can’t keep a good Oscar-winning artist down, and Miyazaki says he’s now coming out of retirement to make one last movie.

The film is the story of a "tiny, hairy caterpillar"

According to reports from Kotaku and the Anime News Network, the news was dropped into a Japanese TV special broadcast over the weekend. Appropriately enough, it was titled Hayao Miyazaki: The Man Who Is Not Done. In it, Miyazaki revealed that he’d been dissatisfied with a recent 12-minute CG short film he’d been working on — Kemushi no Boro or Boro the Caterpillar — and instead wants to turn it into a full-length film. Although the special did not show Miyazaki getting a green light from studio bosses, he is seen starting work on animation for the project. We’ll have to wait for official confirmation, but, well, this is Miyazaki we're talking about — if he wants to make a film, presumably it’s going to get done.

Kemushi no Boro was originally being created for the Ghibli Museum, which opened in Tokyo in 2001 and showcases artifacts from Studio Ghibli, which Miyazaki co-founded. The studio’s many films include Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle. We don’t know much about Kemushi no Boro, but Miyazaki has apparently been developing the story for some 20 years. During the special, Miyazaki said the film was the "story of a tiny, hairy caterpillar, so tiny that it may be easily squished between your fingers." He noted that he might be 80 years old by the time it's finished (he's 75 now), but with his ideal timetable, the film will be done before the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.