The distribution company TOHO announced on the official website for Isao Takahata's Kaguya-hime no Monogatari (The Tale of Princess Kaguya) anime film on Monday that it is delaying the film until this fall. The film was originally slated to open in Japan this summer on the same day as Hayao Miyazaki's Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Is Rising) film. Kaze Tachinu is still slated to open this summer.

TOHO noted that it contacted Studio Ghibli at the beginning of this year and received information that the film's storyboards have not yet been completed. TOHO then decided to postpone the release date in order to raise the film's quality even higher.

The famous Japanese folktale Taketori Monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) centers on princess named Kaguya who was discovered as a baby inside the stalk of a glowing bamboo plant. Taketori Monogatari has inspired dozens of manga and anime stories, such as Reiko Shimizu's Kaguya Hime and Arina Tanemura's Sakura-Hime Kaden.

Takahata already revealed in 2009 that his next film will be based on the folktale. The tagline on the film's website reads, "A princess's crime and punishment."

Shinichiro Ikebe (Future Boy Conan, Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha ) is composing the film's soundtrack. Takahata conceived the story and co-wrote the screenplay with Riko Sakaguchi. This will be Takahata's first film since My Neighbors the Yamadas about 14 year ago.

The last time that Miyazaki and Takahata had films opening on the same day, or even in the same year, was a quarter of a century ago when Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro and Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies were shown back-to-back in Japan in 1988.

[Via Eiga.com]