Studio Ghibli's new film KARIGURASHI NO ARRIETTY announced

Cross-published with my earlier original article at GhibliWorld.

After yesterday's exclusive warming up on Twitter by GhibliWorld, today Studio Ghibli made the official announcement of their new full length feature film titled Karigurashi no Arrietty (The Borrower Arrietty). The film will be an adaptation of Mary Norton's Carnegie Medal winning novel The Borrowers and, as hinted earlier on GhibliWorld, will be directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi.

Unlike the original novel, which tells a story about tiny people who "borrow" things from normal humans during the 1950's in Enland, Studio Ghibli have transferred their version to Tokyo Koganei in 2010 (Koganei is where Studio Ghibli is settled) and tell the story of 14-year-old little Arrietty (Chiisana Arriety was the films original title).

Yonebayashi earlier worked as a key animator on previous Ghibli works like Howl's Moving Castle, Ponyo and Spirited Away and was animation director for Miyazaki Goro's Gedo Senki. Karigurashi no Arrietty will be his directing debut which is something he did not expect to happen (as told by Ghibli producer Suzuki Toshio earlier this week). Nowadays Yonebayashi is encouraged by Miyazaki Hayao every single day, who also happens to be the one handling the planning of the film. Production, as always, will be handled by Suzuki Toshio.

Karigurashi no Arrietty's theme song has been co-written by the French celtic harpist/singer Cécile Corbel who also is responsible for its performance. The theme song will be digitally released in Japan starting December 19.

Karigurashi no Arrietty is to be released summer 2010 and will have a length of about 80 minutes.