Cut Magazine has an interview with Hayao Miyazaki where the venerable animator confesses that if their upcoming Arietty the Borrower doesn’t do well in the box office, plans are already in place to shut down Studio Ghibli.
Suzuki-san is making a dissolution program for Ghibli. No joke, we talked about it the other day. For example, Ghibli should be able to continue with about five staff members as a copyright management company even if we smash the studio. So, Ghibli can say ‘We stop film production. Goodbye’. I do not have to be there.
Presumably Miyazaki means the American box office, as the film has already been released in Japan.
If Arietty does do well, however, Miyazaki confessed that he has a certain Porco Rosso sequel in mind, set in the Spanish Civil War, but that that particular film won’t be made unless Ghibli can make successes of Arietty and two more films.
Cut Magazine is unfortunately (for non-Japanese speakers) in Japanese. Here is the article Google Translated to English, and the Ghibli Wiki has translated quite a few lines from it here.
(via Bleeding Cool.)
