Studio Ghibli, the beloved animation producer behind worldwide hits like Spirited Away, Ponyo, My Neighbor Totoro, and Grave of the Fireflies, is teaming up with Lucasfilm, home to the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, for a mysterious new project. On Thursday, the Japanese studio tweeted a cryptic video teaser, with the Lucasfilm and Studio Ghibli logos back to back and… maddeningly nothing else. The video is silent, so there are no John Williams-penned themes to work from here.
But suffice it to say, the teaser is most likely for an animated project based on a Lucasfilm property, and Star Wars seems like a safe bet. Lucasfilm and Disney have multiple animated Star Wars series, including the recently released Tales of the Jedi and — the most likely candidate for Studio Ghibli — Star Wars: Visions. That animated anthology series featured work from anime studios Kamikaze Douga, Trigger, Production I.G., and others, and creators Hiroyuki Imaishi (Promare), Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex), Eunyoung Choi (Kaiba, Ping Pong The Animation), and Masahiko Otsuka (FLCL, Gurren Lagann), giving them free rein to tell their own stories in the Star Wars universe.
A second season of Star Wars: Visions is coming to Disney Plus in spring 2023. And while Disney and Lucasfilm have not revealed much about who is contributing to it, Star Wars: Visions Volume 2 is pitched as a “global tour, celebrating the incredible animation happening across countries and cultures.”
Polygon has reached out to Lucasfilm for details on its collaboration with Studio Ghibli and will update when the company shares more.
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