It is a surprise and a nice blow. Netflix has announced that it has reached an agreement with the Japanese animation studio Ghibli to broadcast all of its feature films in the world very soon, except the USA, Canada and Japan. French subscribers will have access, from February 1, to “Mon voisin Totoro” (1988), “Kiki la petite sorcière” (1989) or “Porco Rosso” (1992) by Hayao Miyazaki. Other classics will follow, "My neighbors the Yamada" by Isao Takahata (1999), "Princess Mononoke" (1997) or "The Voyage of Chihiro" (2001) by Miyazaki.
A total of 21 films will be posted on the platform: seven in February, seven in March and seven in April. Feature films that made the studio famous, but also rare pearls. Ghibli, founded in Tokyo in 1985 by Miyazaki and Takahata, produced 21 feature films and almost as many short films until 2016. Since then, the studio has practically stopped creating films but has just restarted with several projects, including the next Miyazaki, 79 years old - Takahata died in 2018.
Disney with the pole
If it is a very good operation for Netflix, it is because the platform has managed to convince the bosses of Ghibli, hitherto reluctant to broadcast his films outside the traditional circuits (theaters, DVD, VOD ...). Above all, we expected that the Ghibli catalog would rather land on Disney + (launched in November in the United States and next March 31 in France), Disney being the historical distributor of the Ghibli films internationally. But the discussions seem to have skated, Miyazaki and his collaborators preferred Netflix, which will make the happiness of almost 7 million subscribers in France.