Miyazaki’s final feature film arrived in Japan with no trailers, no voice cast lists, no nothing. You can’t say the same thing about its upcoming international release. How Do You Live? has a new name for its English-speaking distribution: It is now titled The Boy and the Heron for audiences outside of Japan. Abandoning the tone set by the July 14 Japanese release, the GKIDS-distributed film has a little bit more promotional materials, giving fans a taste of Miyazaki’s new world of enchanted forests and fluffy monsters. So far we’ve gotten a teaser trailer, a video introduction, and the English voice cast list. Below, everything we know about Miyazaki’s latest animated fantasy that uses familiar Ghibli images to explore death.
The trailer is giving Spirited Away.
The titular boy, Mahito, flees a burning city in the official English trailer. Where’s the literal bird? He’s voiced by Robert Pattinson and finds our lead in the countryside, catching the boy’s eye as he wanders around a traditional Japanese home. Before we know it, frogs cover his whole body only to beckon him on a journey. According to Pattinson’s gravely voice, his mother awaits rescue. “I’ll be your guide,†the heron tells him as they traverse a tunnel to a world filled with the dead. During his odyssey into the magical land, a woman’s body melts at his touch and a Calcifer-like being rises from the flames. It appears that Mahito’s only mission isn’t to find his mother — he must also protect the land of the dead from a new threat. “You see this world,†an old man says to the boy. “There’s more work to be done.â€
Ghibli stans will appreciate the plot details.
A video introduction to the film provided us with three whole sentences about the plot. The 32-second clip reveals that the movie will follow a young boy named Mahito who yearns for his mother and ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead, where “life finds a new beginning,†the brief synopsis reads, calling it a “semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death, and creation, in tribute to friendship, from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki.†For now, there are a few stills to keep you waiting until its official release date.
In an interview with the Japanese magazine Bungei Shunji earlier this year, the film’s producer (and Miyazaki’s longtime collaborator) Toshio Suzuki explained why there wasn’t any promo for the film’s Japanese premiere. “As part of company operations, over the years Ghibli has wanted people to come see the movies we’ve made. So we’ve thought about that and done a lot of different things for that purpose — but this time we were like, ‘Eh, we don’t need to do that,’†Suzuki said. “Doing the same thing you’ve done before, over and over, you get tired of it. So we wanted to do something different.â€
The film is based on the 1937 novel How Do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino and described as “fantasy on a grand scale.†There’s also a theme song to the film by Kenshi Yonezu called “Spinning Globe†available to stream, giving us a little bit of what the movie’s vibe might be like.
Howl is among the English voice cast.
Howl Jenkins Pendragon is reuniting with Miyazaki. Christian Bale, the actor who voiced the all-powerful wizard in Howl’s Moving Castle, will provide the English dub for character Shoichi Maki, per Variety. The English voice cast also includes Dave Bautista as the Parakeet King, Gemma Chan as Natsuko, Willem Dafoe as Noble Pelican, Karen Fukuhara as Lady Himi, Mark Hamill as Granduncle, Robert Pattinson as the Gray Heron, and Florence Pugh as Kiriko. Plus, Tony Revolri, Dan Stevens, and Mamoudou Athie will lend their voices to the Parakeets. You actor Luca Padovan is protagonist Mahito Maki.
Release date when?
The Boy and the Heron lands in theaters December 8. If it is anything like Miyazaki’s other films, it’ll definitely make us cry a little too hard.
This post has been updated throughout.