SINGAPORE - Studio Ghibli, the Japanese house behind many popular and acclaimed works of animation, will place its entire library of 21 films on the streaming service Netflix.
The films will be made available to subscribers in Singapore and in most of the world from Feb 1, when the first block of seven films will go online.
The first block includes classics such as My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) and Porco Rosso (1992). The second block of seven films, to be released March 1, has Princess Mononoke (1997) and winner of the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, Spirited Away (2001). The final block of seven on April 1 includes Howl's Moving Castle (2004) and Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea (2008).
The line-up does not include the acclaimed war film Grave Of The Fireflies (1988) as it was produced by Studio Ghibli for Shinchosha Publishing, the publisher of the original short story it was based on.
Netflix declined to say for how long the Studio Ghibli films will stay on the service. Analysts believe that the move is a hedge against rival Disney, which is preparing to take its vast and popular animation library to a global audience with its Disney+ streaming service, which has already launched in countries such as the United States, Canada and Australia.
Producer Toshio Suzuki, 71, who has worked with its famed director Hayao Miyazaki from Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind (1984), spoke to media on a telephone conference.
Addressing the question of why he felt the need to take his films to Netflix, he says he is a fan of the service, especially of the political thriller series House Of Cards (2013 to 2018) and its arthouse works like the Oscar-winning film Roma (2018).
"I found the Netflix approach to streaming the most interesting... and they gave us a proposal that we couldn't turn down," he says in Japanese through an interpreter, without elaborating further.
He adds that this deal does not mean that the studio is abandoning releases in cinema or on DVDs and Blu-Ray.
"These can all co-exist," he says. Under director Miyazaki, the studio is producing its 22nd feature, the family drama How Do You Live?, adapted from a 1937 Japanese novel. It is expected to be released in theatres close to the July 24 opening of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
With his films now on the streaming service, he hopes that more people around the world can discover his studio's films. He says he will let Netflix promote his films in their own way, as they know best what works for each country, he says.
"In Spirited Away, there is a ghost character called No Face. In Japan, kids would cry when they saw him. I was in Taiwan and saw it with a Taiwanese audience and when they saw No Face, they got excited and laughed. And no one there could tell me why.
"It's a good example of how reactions can be different in each market," he says.
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January 20, 2020 at 01:26PM
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Studio Ghibli films such as Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro to stream on Netflix - The Straits Times
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