‘The Boy and Heron’ Producer on Why Hayao Miyazaki Came Out of Retirement

Hayao Miyazaki’s decades-long producer Toshio Suzuki — also co-founder and president of the animation icon’s Japan-based Studio Ghibli — admits that even he was surprised when Miyazaki, now 83, reached out to him in 2016 to say that he wanted to make another movie. “It was only three years after he announced his retirement, and at that time, I honestly believed that we wouldn’t be making any more films together,” says Suzuki, who spoke with The Hollywood Reporter with the help of an interpreter. “[Miyazaki] said that because ‘I found it quite embarrassing to come back after announcing that I’ll be retiring, I won’t be showing myself in public.’ ”

Months later, Suzuki received storyboards representing about 20 minutes of what would become The Boy and the Heron and spent a weekend pondering how to respond. “I knew that he really wanted to make this film, so I had to decide whether or not I should let him. I finally went through the storyboards on Sunday night, and it was really good. It was very interesting and captivating,” he says, adding, “It was very clear what he wanted to do. And what he wanted to do was basically tell his life story. I could tell that this was going to be something very epically pessimistic.”

The following morning, he drove to the studio to meet Miyazaki. “I had decided that I was going to say no to the project,” Suzuki admits, given Miyazaki’s very public retirement. “And when I arrived at the studio, what he did was very rare. He opened the door for me, and then he asked me if I wanted to drink coffee. That showed how much he really wanted to do this project. So just seeing that, all of my objections just flew away. And that was the moment I decided, OK, we should go with this project.”

The Boy and the Heron went on to receive a string of accolades, including an Academy Award nomination (Miyazaki’s fourth nom and Suzuki’s third; Miyazaki won a competitive Oscar for 2001’s Spirited Away and earned an Academy Honorary Award in 2014). With distributor GKIDS, the movie became the highest-grossing original Japanese animated film of all time in North America, with nearly $45 million.

The story follows a young boy, Mahito, who, after losing his mother, moves to his family’s home in the country. There, he meets a heron who leads him into an alternate world shared by the living and the dead.

Suzuki says that Miyazaki, whom he has known for 45 years, “didn’t go through his boyhood being this happy-go-lucky guy, [rather, he was] very introspective, very dark to himself.” He adds that the director’s mother was a very important person in his life and had overcome an illness when Miyazaki was a child.

“The story is basically introspective,” he says. “But [Miyazaki] is very good at making balance. And so once the story is getting very dark, he knew that he had to bring something brighter, positive, into the film, too.”

Of the alternate world, he says, “my interpretation was that this world we live in, it’s not just good things. But still there’s meaning to live in this world and there is a value that comes from living in this world.” He adds, though, that he believes Miyazaki wants viewers to decide what to take away from the film.

“Now I am happy that I didn’t say no,” Suzuki notes. “If he hadn’t made this film, he wouldn’t have been able to die a happy man.” 

And might Miyazaki choose to make another movie? “I really don’t know. I really can’t tell,” the producer responds. “But if he says he wants to make one more film, I would support him wholeheartedly.”

This story first appeared in the Feb. 14 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.