‘How Do You Live?’: Studio Ghibli’s model for the future of movie marketing
2023 is hosting a multitude of filmmaking comebacks, with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Yorgos Lanthimos, Sofia Coppola, Denis Villeneuve and Jonathan Glazer each releasing brand new movies this year. Still, no return has been quite as anticipated as Hayao Miyazaki, the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, who hasn’t taken to the silver screen since he directed The Wind Rises in 2013.
One decade later and the filmmaking auteur who has helmed such animated classics as 1997’s Princess Mononoke and 2001’s Spirited Away is about to release what is believed to be his final feature film, titled Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka (How Do You Live?). A coming of age story about a young teenage boy, we can hardly blame you if you haven’t already heard of the movie, with the filmmaker and Studio Ghibli soon to be releasing the movie in Japan alongside no promotional materials at all besides a poster that was dropped online back in December 2022.
Such a practice is utterly unprecedented in contemporary cinema, for how does one know whether to see a film without early teasers, main trailers, TV spots, featurettes and countless posters? Indeed, the approach to advertising Miyazaki’s latest movie acts in exact juxtaposition to Warner Bros’ forthcoming Barbie film, which has suffocated the market with copious amounts of pink merchandise and visual promotion.
Yet, How Do You Live? is doing the exact opposite, luring audiences and critics in with the mere promise of more Studio Ghibli magic and the final chance to see a new Miyazaki movie on the big screen. Whether the move proves to be financially foolish or simply revolutionary remains to be seen, but it’s unlikely that the colossal magnetism of Ghibli won’t be able to attract hordes of curious cinephiles through the cinema doors.
It certainly helps that Miyazaki is one of the most important filmmakers of modern cinema, comparable to the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Lynne Ramsay and the aforementioned Jonathan Glazer, with the director able to lure in punters through the utterance of his name alone. Yet, this approach to marketing is at such odds with the contemporary cinematic landscape that its tactics prompt further consideration, reminding audiences of the days in which they could stumble upon an unknown independent movie and be thrown down a rabbit hole of totally unexpected ingenuity.
By the time we plonk ourselves down on our aptly-cushioned seats, dressed head-to-toe in hot pink for the release of Barbie, many of us will feel as though we’ve seen the entire movie, thanks to the needless commercial coverage Warner Bros has made for the film. It may indeed be a popcorn flick with a predictable narrative arc, but there’s nothing quite like having no idea what’s coming next, rather than merely awaiting ‘that bit’ from the trailer to play out before your eyes.
It takes a lot to be truly surprised in modern cinema, with clever blockbuster twists usually being ruined by irritating paparazzi leaking set photos years before a film’s release or, indeed, by their own studios revealing far more than they need to about a respective movie.
It’s time to take a leaf out of Studio Ghibli’s book and scale back on advertising, that way, we could have looked forward to going full-throttle into Barbie’s fantastic plastic world without having seen every inch of its beauty already. As for How Do You Live?, we await its mystery with bated breath.
