If you’ve loved movies like My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo, and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, you’ll be excited to know that Studio Ghibli’s newest movie, When Marnie Was There, is finally coming to theaters in the U.S. on May 22. But you might also be sad to know that this could be the studio’s last film.
The studio hasn’t said whether or not it will work on another feature-length movie to follow When Marnie Was There, according to The Verge. After the movie’s release last summer, the animation giant announced that it was pausing production on new movies, though it would not say whether it was done making new movies for good.
Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi (whose last movie was his great 2010 debut The Secret World of Arrietty), When Marnie Was There follows young tomboy Anna, who explores an abandoned villa and develops a friendship with Marnie, a girl that no one else can see. Variety notes that the film underperformed at the box office in Japan compared to its predecessors, but the review also notes that the movie contains the same “unique sense of enchantment” viewers have come to expect from Studio Ghibli. and since this might be the last, it’s all the more reason to watch and savor the careful craftsmanship that goes into making these hand-drawn masterpieces.
