Studio Ghibli’s First CG-Animated Film Debuts in Just a Few Months

Studio Ghibli is gearing up to release its CG-animated film based on Earwing and the Witch later this year.

Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli announced it will release its first 3D-animated film based on Diana Wynne Jones’ novel Earwig and the Witch later this year.

Miyazaki is overseeing Aya and the Witch with his son Goro set to direct. Studio Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki will serve as the film’s producer. While the animation studio has used some CGI in its films throughout the years, Aya marks its first fully-CGI animated feature.

The animation legend is a huge fan of the children’s novel and was inspired to create a film based on it. “It is such a wonderful book. It’s the last work by Diana Wynne Jones, and thanks to the drawings from (Japanese-edition illustrator) [Miho] Satake and the [Tokuma Shoten] editors, it’s become an unspeakably compelling work. I’ve read it cover-to-cover five times,” Miyazaki said while praising the novel.

This is not the first time the studio has produced a film based on Jones’ work, as her 1986 fantasy novel Howl’s Moving Castle was adapted into the 2006 Oscar-nominated animated fantasy of the same name. Aya and the Witch is one of two films the animation studio is working on for this year, the other being the coming-of-age fantasy How Do You Live?.

For the first time in decades, Studio Ghibli will premiere the animated film adaptation on television rather than having a theatrical release. Japanese public broadcaster NHK announced on June 3 that it will premiere the film during the winter.

(via SoraNews24 via Oricon News via Livedoor News via Otakomu)