Full The Boy And The Heron Trailer And Release Date Revealed

The Boy and the Heron main character

GKIDS Films and Studio Ghibli have finally released a real trailer for the upcoming – and likely last – Hayao Miyazaki film, The Boy and the Heron. The film has been shrouded in secrecy since its announcement in Japan, with very few details released either before or following its release in its home country.

In Japan, there were no trailers, no screenshots, and very few story details released prior to the film’s debut, just a single poster and a brief description. That didn’t stop the mysterious Ghibli film from opening to strong ticket sales in July, with its opening weekend having 1.353 million tickets sold, earning over $15 million USD.

Promotion in the west has been similarly secretive before now, with only a few stills showing what Miyazaki’s last film looked like being released last month. The recent first teaser for The Boy and the Heron wasn’t much more illuminating, with the entire trailer being little more than some white text on a black background, with a few musical stings playing in accompaniment.

This new trailer, though, foregoes that secrecy, showing us scenes from the actual movie, in motion and everything. We knew the film was beautiful from the stills, but seeing it in motion is a whole other story. Everything you know and love about Studio Ghibli films, from the animation and the character design to the sound design and music, is here in spades, and it all looks and sounds incredible.

Here’s how GKIDS and Studio Ghibli describe the film:

“A young boy named Mahito yearning for his mother ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead. There, death comes to an end, and life finds a new beginning.

A semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death, and creation, in tribute to friendship, from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki.”

Not only did The Boy and the Heron get a trailer, it also got a release date. GKIDS says the film will be released exclusively in theaters on December 8, 2023.