The Boy And The Heron Teaser Gives Us A Look At Hayao Miyazaki's First Film In 10 Years
"The Boy and the Heron" was released in Japan back in July, and it had one of the greatest marketing strategies of all time, in my opinion. There was one poster featuring a close-up drawing of a white and blue heron that had oddly human eyes peeking out from its beak. And that was it. No string of publicity stills, no trailers, no TV spots. Nothing. You had a poster, a release date, and that name Hayao Miyazaki, one of the most beloved filmmakers on the planet supposedly making his final film. The gambit paid off, and the film is doing splendidly in Japan.
I was hoping that this marketing tactic would be adopted around the world, but that isn't the case. We now have a few stills from the movie, like the one seen above, and now, we even have a teaser trailer for Miyazaki's latest. As someone who likes to know as little about a movie as I possibly can going in, this more traditional marketing for the North American release of "The Boy and the Heron" makes avoiding this information a tad more difficult but not insurmountable. I shouldn't be surprised by this though. Though enormously respected, Miyazaki just doesn't hold the same cultural capital here as he does in Japan. The cult in the United States is large and fervent, but it doesn't hold a candle to his mainstream success in his home country.
Below, you can find the new teaser trailer for Miyazaki's film, if you just can't help yourself from getting glimpses at the Studio Ghibli goodness. As for me, I will not be clicking play.
Watch The Boy and the Heron teaser trailer
The film is inspired by the 1937 novel "How Do You Live?" by Genzaburo Yoshino but is pointedly not an adaptation of the work. A press release for "The Boy and the Heron" describes it as:
"The hand-drawn, animated feature film — director Miyazaki's first feature film in 10 years — is an original story written and directed by Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki and produced by his longtime company partner/co-founder and Academy Award nominee Toshio Suzuki. It features a musical score from Miyazaki's long-time collaborator Joe Hisaishi, and the film's theme song, 'Spinning Globe,' was penned and performed by global J-pop superstar Kenshi Yonezu."
"The Boy and the Heron" will open in theaters on December 8, 2023, but first, it will be playing at the Toronto International Film Festival and New York Film Festival in the coming weeks.