Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli to Build Japan Theme Park

By Mark Schilling

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Japan’s iconic Studio Ghibli animation house has joined forces with local partners to build its first .

Together with the government of Aichi Prefecture and the Chunichi Shimbun newspaper, the company will develop a park within Expo 2005 Aichi Commemorative Park. The venue, not far from Nagoya in central Japan, was a world’s fair held for 185 days in 2005 that attracted nearly 22 million visitors to its 460-acre site.

Details were announced Friday by Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki, Aichi governor Hideaki Omura and Chunichi CEO Uichiro Oshima at a press conference in Tokyo. The park is scheduled to open in the fall of 2022, with additional attractions opening a year later. The construction budget was not announced.

Ghibli will handle the creative side of the project. Five-themed areas are foreseen, based on Hayao Miyazaki’s “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “Princess Mononoke,” as well as other Ghibli films.

Miyazaki, who is currently working on a new feature, “is really worried about the Ghibli park,” Suzuki jokingly told reporters. “He can’t leave anything up to other people. He’s a meddlesome old man.” Miyazaki’s only son Goro Miyazaki “is working hard (on the park project), but (Miyazaki) is not the type to look on supportively from a distance,” Suzuki continued. “He starts in right away with ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do that’.”

Earlier this month it was confirmed that Ghibli’s “Spirited Away” is to get a theatrical release in China, on June 21, 18 years after it opened in Japan and elsewhere.