News
Disney Announces Mononoke
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As the Walt Disney corporation's planned summer 1999 release of the Hayao Miyazaki film "The Princess Mononoke" draws near, the studio has announced its choice of casting for the program. These include Claire Danes (Romeo & Juliet) as San, Gillian Anderson (X-files) as Moro, Minnie Driver (Good Will Hunting) as Eboshi, and Billy Crudup (Inventing the Abbots) as Ashitaka. (In a video letter at a press conference, Ms. Anderson mentioned that her daughter is a Totoro fan.)
Miramax will release MH in the US from April to June in about 1,000 theaters in 100 cities. The English version will also be sold in Japan.
In other Disney/Ghibli news, the new end theme of Kiki's Delivery Service, "I'm Gonna Fly" (performed by Sydney Forest), can now be sampled at http://www.sydneyforest.com/.
Ghiblink news service reports that the next Studio Ghibli film, My Neighbor Yamada-kun, will be an Issao Takahata project, and will also be released in the United States by Buena Vista/Disney (who has contributed 10% of the project's costs). Reportedly a light-hearted comedy, it will be entirely computer-animated, and will not make any use of the traditional cel animation technique. It will be released in Japan next summer.
