The studio behind many popular and beloved animated films such as "My Neighbor Totoro", "Howl's Moving Castle", "Kiki's Delivery Service", and even the record breaking "Spirited Away" which became one of the highest grossing animated films worldwide, has chosen to keep their films away from streaming services.
Gkids who owns the North American rights to Ghibli films and is a distributor, told Polygon:
"Studio Ghibli does not make their films available digitally, whether for download or streaming, anywhere in the world… They continue to believe that presentation is vital and particularly appreciate opportunities for audiences to experience the films together in a theatrical setting."
Founder and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli have had some history with bumps in the road while bringing films to the west, and Miyazaki is often pretty expressive of his distaste with modern society. If you follow enough Miyazaki interviews and posts on the web, you'll come to learn of his dislike for the present anime industry, otaku, and sometimes the west itself.
Primarily, Miyazaki is known to be old fashioned and pretty vocal on expressing that in different ways. These notions are also visible in some interviews, and a little bit is described in the article from Polygon.
Whatever you do, do not invite Miyazaki to critique your creepy artificial intelligence graphics experiments.
With all that being said, its somewhat interesting that even on the scale of a decision for the company, Ghibli reflects Miyazaki's mindset and chooses to put the cinematic experience first, narrowing down their exposure to special movie theater showings and blu-rays.
This news squashes some recent hopes for Ghibli films to appear on Disney+ since Disney had long distributed Ghibli films in the past. One big reason this wont happen besides the reason Gkids told Polygon about not wanting to stream their films in the first place, is because Gkids has fully taken over Ghibli distribution since 2017 after some back-and-forth legal matters between Disney and Studio Ghibli.
As far as what's been stated by Gkids, you'll never be able to "Nausicaa and chill" via Netflix, Disney+, or any streaming service for that matter. You'll just keep having to catch opportunities to experience some of their classic and new hits thanks to their many blu-ray releases and special Gkids events.
Should Ghibli and Miyazaki get with the times? Or is it important for them to maintain the classic cinematic experience? Let us know in the comments!
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