While it's sad that Studio Ghibli has closed, there's a lot of excitement around the opportunities this opens up for many of their employees. Studio vets Hiromasa Yonebayashi, Yoshiaki Nishimura and other prized animators went out and formed Studio Ponoc, and their first movie right out of the gate, Mary and the Witch's Flower, looks like it fits the Ghibli mold perfectly.
Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who helmed Ghibli's The Secret World of Arrietty and When Marnie was There, the film is a retooled adaptation of Mary Stewart's book, The Little Broomstick. This trailer is different from the prior one in that we hear for the first time voicework from 19-year-old star, Hana Sugizaki.
It's probably a long way until we learn about U.S. localization, especially since it doesn't have distribution here yet. Within Ponoc they refer to the film as the "21st century edition of Kiki's Delivery Service", or at least that was their goal. Lofty expectations to be sure, but they seem to be in the right ballpark. Mary and the Witch's Flower opens in Japan this July, and hopefully we'll get it here soon after.
