Hayao Miyazaki May Be Coming Out From Retirement to Make Last Film

Hayao Miyazaki, a legendary Japanese animator and director who's also the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, announced that he's coming out of his retirement to make one final film.

Miyazaki retired back in 2013 where he announced that he would stop making feature-length films to give way to smaller projects.

During the NHK television special entitled The Man Not Done: Hayao Miyazaki, last Sunday, the director said that he wants to return to making a full feature anime film.

Miyazaki was working on a 12-minute CG short film for Ghibli Museum that's called Kemushi no Boro (Boro the Caterpillar), when he thought that the short film was not enough and that he wanted a full film of it. Miyazaki described the short films simply as, "story of a tiny hairy caterpillar, so tiny that it may be easily squished between your fingers."

Despite that there has been no approval for the film yet from the studio, Miyazaki decided to start working in it anyway.

If it pushes through, the feature-length version of Kemushi no Boro would be finished by 2019, the director believes. It's around the same time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Miyazaki's 80th birthday.