Warner holds on to Studio Ghibli movies, thanks to multiyear Max streaming deal

12.03.2024 - 16:01 / polygon.com / James Gunn / David Zaslav

Here’s a minor win for fans of Good Things who also subscribe to Max: the Studio Ghibli collection will remain on streaming for the foreseeable future.

Over the last year, media conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery has become the emblem of cutthroat restructuring in an already tumultuous entertainment landscape. Under CEO David Zaslav, the company has buried Warner Bros. movies like Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme for tax purposes, licensed classic HBO content to Netflix, partnered with Disney and Fox to create a sports streaming service, gutted (then reconsidered) Turner Classic Movies, delisted indie games on Steam as it openly pivots its gaming division to a free-to-play strategy, and put all its chips on James Gunn to save the DC movie and TV properties. The decisions ruffled artists’ feathers and sent a fog over the brand’s many studios, the future left frustratingly unclear.

But someone upstairs really loves Hayao Miyazaki’s films. They’ve been deemed important enough to lock down on the Max service.

Max and GKIDS, one of the great animation distributors operating today, announced on Tuesday that the 2020 deal that brought the Studio Ghibli library to streaming for the first time — including all of master Hayao Miyazaki’s films — has been reupped in a “multiyear agreement.” (A representative for Max declined to share specifics around the deal with Polygon.) Films like My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and The Tale of the Princess Kaguyawere all part of the original, unprecedented deal four years ago, which saw the collection come to streaming for the first time alongside the launch of the HBO Max service. Time has passed, mergers have occurred, and rebranding efforts have morphed HBO Max into just Max, but the good news is that the Ghibli movies remain — and will stay in streaming circulation at least until 2025.

The announcement also notes that Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning film The Boy and the Heron is included in the deal, and will premiere on Max “later this year.” Positioned as Miyazaki’s final film, The Boy and the Heron won big at the 96th Academy Awards earlier this month, though the director was not on hand to receive the award. His longtime producer and Ghibli cofoudner Toshio Suzuki later issued this statement, delivered via a translator backstage at the Oscars, in response to the win.

“This was a truly difficult project to bring to completion,” he wrote. “I am very appreciative that the work that was created after overcoming these difficulties has been received by so many people around the world and has received this recognition. Both Hayao Miyazaki and I have aged considerably. I am grateful to receive such an honor at my age. And taking this as a message to