The Studio Ghibli co-founder, general manager, and former producer Toshio Suzuki, who appeared on Fuji TV’s Bokura no Jidai talk show program revealed that the studio has received many offers from top directors wanting to make a live-action of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind adaptation. The list of directors include Hideaki Anno and Takashi Yamazaki who repeatedly expressed their interest in adapting Nausicaa.
Takashi Yamazaki is a Japanese animator who is known for his work in Always: Sunset on Third Street and the live-action adaptations of anime Parasyte and Space Battleship Yamato. Suzuki remarked that he has always denied Yamazaki’s offers.
Suzuki continued by saying that the only person who does not want to make a live-action version of the 1984 film is Hayao Miyazaki.
In a 2013 interview, on asking if he were interested in making the sequel of Nausicaa, to which Miyazaki replied that he was uninterested in such a project but that he would approve of Hideaki Anno taking it on.
Miyazki also added, “I do not feel like doing it, but Anno keeps on saying, ‘I want to do it! I want to do it!’ so I tell him now that I’ve come to think lately that if he wanted to do it, it would be fine for him to do it.”
Anno was the key animator on the original 1984 Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind film, who was connected to Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki for multiple decades. He worked on various animation projects like the Shin Godzilla, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone, and The Wind Rises.
Earlier in 2019, Suzuki said, “For Miyazaki, out of all the various works he has done, Nausicaa is the most important, there have been various requests to do a live-action version, even from Hollywood. He turned them all down.”
Studio Ghibli, an acclaimed Japanese animation film studio that was founded in 1985 by animators and directors Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao and producer Suzuki Toshio. Studio Ghibli is known for the high quality of its filmmaking and its artistry. The studio was founded after the success of the 1984 film Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.