Distributor Toho has started talking 2014 and what they’re going to be handling and it’s provided the real for the next Studio Ghibli film with When Marnie Was There. The book, one Hayao Miyazaki listed as one of the fifty books that children should read, was released in England back in 1981 by Joan G. Robinson. The feature will bring back the director from Arrietty, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, to handle this film as his second for the studio. The first image is up, which you can see a larger version of clicking on it on the right, and the official site as well at http://marnie.jp/.
Additional staff on the film includes Keiko Niwa who will be handling the screenplay along with Masashi Ando and director Yonebayashi while Takatsugu Muramatsu has signed on to score the film.
Book Concept: Anna hasn’t a friend in the world – until she meets Marnie among the sand dunes. But Marnie isn’t all she seems…An atmospheric ghost story with truths to tell about friendship, families and loneliness. Anna lives with foster parents, a misfit with no friends, always on the outside of things. Then she is sent to Norfolk to stay with old Mr and Mrs Pegg, where she runs wild on the sand dunes and around the water. There is a house, the Marsh House, which she feels she recognises – and she soon meets a strange little girl called Marnie, who becomes Anna’s first ever friend. Then one day, Marnie vanishes. A new family, the Lindsays, move into the Marsh House. Having learnt so much from Marnie about friendship, Anna makes firm friends with the Lindsays – and learns some strange truths about Marnie, who was not all she seemed…
[Source: ANN]