Spirited Away Director Comes Out of Retirement for One More Feature Film

Legendary anime director Hayao Miyazaki has come out of retirement to work on one last feature film. Best known for movies like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro, Miyazaki retired from making feature films in 2013.

During a television special that was appropriately titled, "The Man Who Is Not Done: Hayao Miyazaki," the acclaimed director revealed that he was set on turning Boro the Caterpillar, a CG short he's working on, into a full-length film. Anime News Network reports that a project proposal for the film was presented this past August, and despite the fact that it hasn't yet been greenlit, Miyazaki has already started work on animation for the project.

While work on a full-length version of Boro the Caterpillar is underway, the original 12-minute short is still set to release exclusively for viewing at the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo. However, it won't be completed for around another year. The short's story has been planned for almost 20 years and is described by Miyazaki as "a story of a tiny, hairy caterpillar, so tiny that it may be easily squished between your fingers."

Other films Miyazaki has worked on include Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Porco Rosso, among many others. Of all his films, Spirited Away is his most commercially successful one. It opened in 2001 and is still the Japanese box office's highest earning film ever. Additionally, it won an Oscar for Best Animated Film in 2003.