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Studio Ghibli is partnering with Star Wars’ Lucasfilm, it looks like

Casey Baseel Nov 11, 2022
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Mysterious tweet from Ghibli’s account suggests the two titans are working together, but on what?

Studio Ghibli’s official Twitter account isn’t particularly chatty. Oftentimes the esteemed anime house’s tweets contain nothing but a simple photograph of some art supplies on a work desk, or a close-up of plant life in the studio’s garden.

Ghibli’s latest tweet is, once again, absent any sort of accompanying text. However, it has fans of anime and movies typing out “WHAAAAAAT????” and equivalent expressions with expressions with blazing speed, because it appears to foreshadow some sort of upcoming creative partnership with Lucasfilm, the U.S. film production company best known for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises.

https://twitter.com/JP_GHIBLI/status/1590720957676949504

It’s worth noting that the Ghibli Twitter account has previously given shout-outs to other media companies just because they like them. In those cases, though, there’s usually a photo of some piece of artwork related to the company being saluted that’s displayed within Studio Ghibli, like when they tweeted “Love Pixar.” Ghibli’s new tweet, though, is a video of the Lucasfilm logo followed by the Ghibli logo, both as they appear at the start of their movies, so it’s hard to see this as signaling anything other than a collaborative project between the two media powerhouses.

The question, though, is what kind of collaboration. Several Twitter commenters are predicting that this means Ghibli is going to be producing animation to be used in a new batch of episodes for Star Wars: Visions, the team-up between Lucasfilm and prominent anime creators that resulted in nine animated shorts that were releases last year.

However, given Ghibli’s unparalleled level of prestige in the anime industry, it seems unlikely that they’d be involved in an anthology project as just one of multiple contributors (though Hayao Miyazaki did draw the illustrated logo for Studio Khara’s Anima(tor)’s Exhibition anthology series). Ghibli doing a feature-length Star Wars anime would also be unusual for the studio, as it’s generally shown a preference for adapting books, not live-action movies.

▼ Kiki’s Delivery Service, along with Howl’s Moving Castle, Earwig and the Witch, and several other Ghibli anime started out as children’s novels.

They could also be working in the opposite direction, with Lucasfilm adapting a Ghibli anime to live-action. Though Hayao Miyazaki has turned down multiple live-action movie offers from Hollywood producers, Ghibli has shown a willingness to allow artists outside the studio to adapt their anime, if they feel like the match is the right one. That’s how we got the Nausicaa kabuki production, and the U.K. has staged both a Princess Mononoke stage play and My Neighbor Totoro musical. With Lucasfilm’s reputation for excellence in creature design and special effects, both practical and digital, they’d be a relatively reassuring company to handle a live-action Studio Ghibli adaptation’s visuals.

A third possibility is Ghibli and Lucasfilm working together on some completely new story of some sort, and we also can’t rule out that the collaboration is going to be for merchandise, given Ghibli’s recent penchant for such endeavors. Whatever the collaboration is, though, hopefully they won’t keep us waiting long for more details.

Source: Twitter/@JP_GHIBLI
Featured image: Twitter/@JP_GHIBLI
Top image: Studio Ghibli
Insert images: Studio Ghibli
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