Forum - View topicNEWS: Miyazaki DVDs Delayed Again?
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Proman
 Posts: 947 Location: USA |
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That's true to a certain extent, but they can aslo try to appeal to people who liked or heard about Spirited Away but are not typical anime fans. They can also say something like "From the Academy Award winner Hayao Miyazaki..." in the trailer. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4466 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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The original reason for the delays was that the deal was made during the DVD and LaserDisc era when Disney knew the next generation of home video was around the corner, but they did not know which format would become the dominant one, DVD, Divx, or something else. While Disney was able to get away with a VHS and LD-only release of Kiki's Delivery Service in 1998, within the next year, the market for LaserDisc had pretty much dried up completely, and a VHS-only release would have no longer been acceptable. The entire Ghibli library had to be re-released on DVD in Japan, and the first Ghibli DVDs didn't even start appearing in Japan until, if I remember correctly, the spring of 2001, and Ghibli wouldn't let Disney put any of the films onto DVD in North America until after they had been out in Japan for a certain period of Japan, with the singular exception of Princess Mononoke, which Ghibli let Disney release early on DVD in North America as kind of a consolation prize. And the Ghibli films are a backburner item for BVHE, so they get around to they get around to dubbing them when they get around to dubbing them, and doing a dub up to Disney standards takes a while.
In the case of Laputa specifcally, the mistake was probably advertising the dub to be released in 1999... from what I've read on the Miyazaki mailing list, when the English dub was first publically screened at a children's film festival in New York in the year 2000, there were still many timing issues and portions that needed to be re-recorded, and, since Disney uses A-minus and B-list celebrities for the voices, they have to work around the celebrities' schedules, so doing and fixing such a dub takes much longer than it would if they just used the voice pool at a studio like Bang Zoom. Releasing the films on video in North America are only a small portion of the Disney-Tokuma deal; Ghibli needed a partner in releasing the films in large areas of the globe where pretty much only Disney had efficient video distribution. |
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Haiseikoh 1973
 Posts: 1590 Location: Waiting for the Japanese 1000 Gunieas. |
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Hey, it's not like we can't have some fun with this now, can we? While we wait, might as well make fun of the situation. 
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vherub
Posts: 49 |
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I agree the delay would be to coincide with a launch of howl, this is just standard marketing practice (and frankly, i do believe the dvds will do better if they are released when howl is and that is better for fans as well)
While corporate disney may have many problems, i would imagine that whoever is in charge of relations with ghibli is very much an anime lover- this is pure speculation, but whatever income disney gets from the ghibli movies is a pittance compared to its other dvd earnings and even in large corporations you can still have pockets of people pulling for something they love hopefully the delay will mean some better extra features on the 2nd disc. The storyboards are nice, but it aside from that, i would have liked some more interviews, indepth features, and so on. |
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bluechibi
Posts: 137 |
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Compared to all of the animes released today the Ghibli films have got to be the worst or pretty close to the worst with regard to extras, DVD menus, packaging to name a few.
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GATSU
Posts: 15292 |
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Tenchi: Yes, we've heard of Buena Vista Japan and Ghibli being stingy about releasing Ghibli R1 versions of their flicks. But Disney has waited on many of these films long after they've been released on dvd in Japan, so I don't think the Japan licensors are to blame on this one. As for dubbing, most of their films have also long been dubbed, so I don't consider that an excuse either. Moving on to Laputa, I don't see how it would take three years to to perfect a dub. And if Ghibli needed a distributor, why not Warner Bros.? They didn't take a decade to release Grave of the Fireflies. It's obvious that Miyazaki sold out the company, especially when he said he promised he'd never work with Disney only a year before he signed up with them. Oh well, hopefully the red tint issue will convince them to break ties when their contract is up for renewal.
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Lanisatu
 Posts: 65 Location: Vaughan, Ontario, Canada |
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Some of you may want to read about the deal on nauiscaa.net before you start bashing everyone left, right, and centre.
Disney is not allowed to cut anything. They have changed/ modified things like song lyrics and added background music to the Tokuma productions that they have released to date; but ONLY with permission from Tokuma or, in the case of Miyazaki's films; they HAVE to get permission from Miyazki to do anything that doesn't already comply to their deal. Fox & Time-Warner both contacted Tokuma, but Disney was chosen because they were the only one who agreed to make no cuts. I suspect that at least part of the reason that this "no cuts" rule is so important to Miyazaki, in order to maintain the quality and content of his works, is because of what happened when Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind was originally dubbed into English. Nausicaä was one of Miyazaki's first major projects (i.e. one of the first major projects he created and was in charge of). After it was hacked to bits, character names were changed, and the story altered -- all to create the dub Warriors of the Wind -- I don't blame him for being upset about it. If you want to get technical: it was cut from 117 mins to 90 mins. The dubbing company basically tried to change it into an action movie, removing "boring" pieces. Miyazaki has said that he didn't/ doesn't like Disney, but he has also said that he didn't/ doesn't like other companies -- and later worked for said companies. As for Pixar, Disney did NOT "kick them out." On the contrary, Pixar decided to LEAVE Disney. Why? (read about it here)
i.e. while Pixar did most of the hard work on the creative end, Disney (who handled distibution & marketing) was getting the larger share of the profits. I don't know why the DVD release of Nausicaä is being delayed, again. Maybe they do want to include a trailer for Howl's Moving Castle; maybe they want to add extras/ special features; or maybe they wanted to modify/ add something and they're waiting for Miyazaki's response. Or, perhaps, they're working out details to modify the deal; possibly negotiating the distribution rights of Howl's Moving Castle. Maybe we'll eventually find out what's causing the delay, or maybe we won't. Regardless of the reason, we still have to wait. And, if you recall -- Spirited Away was back IN theatres once Miyazaki won his (long overdue) Oscar, distributed on a much larger scale, complete with TV commercials [at least in Canada]. And wasn't it pulled on the scheduled DVD release date? They didn't delay that release date; though they would probably have made a greater profit had they kept the film in theatres longer. If you desperately need a Nausicaä fix; read the manga. I admit, that I've felt rather impatient about the release of Nausicaä on DVD as well, partly because I've known since at least 1997/ 1998 that it would definitely be included in the deal; I own copies of the entire Nausicaä "perfect collection" manga series; and I've been watching Warriors since 1988 or so (we taped it off of a TV movie network). I've been wanting to see a good, uncut version of the Nausicaä movie for a long time. I think I'll go dancing in the streets when I finally own a copy... ~_^ --Emily |
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GATSU
Posts: 15292 |
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Lanisatu: If Miyazaki cared about enforcing the "no cuts" rule, then he wouldn't give John Lasseter the permission to trim Spirited Away.
Moving on to Pixar, Disney created conditions which forced Pixar to leave the fold, thus indirectly "kicking them out".
Actually, the article you linked obviously indicates that Pixar got greedy. Promoting and distributing films takes time and money, and even research to consider the best release dates. And Disney is the only major studio in America which can successfully slap its name on an animated product and get big returns, even when they flop, because of home video. That's why Pixar is still hoping Eisner leaves, because other studios would seriously mishandle their products,even if they'd pay more for them. (The only reason Dreamworks is making money is because of parodies and jumping on the cg bandwagon. And Warner Bros. turned a successful franchise like Powerpuff Girls into a flop at the box office; and they even admitted they screwed it up. But even duds like Home on the Range and Atlantis will still make their cost back in the long run.) As for Spirited Away, it was back in theaters for a short time. The only positive is that at least we didn't get screwed with the red tint dvd like the Japanese. |
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bluechibi
Posts: 137 |
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Will Disney always on the rights to the Ghibli films forever or will the license run out and then a new, proper distributer can come along and re-release them on DVDs - nice DVDs, with lots of features and decent packaging and in some cases both the Disney dub and the much better Carl Macek dub. Oh and subtitles not dubtitles.
I'll wait for that day. 
So when Disney does remakes for all the current Pixar film (and you bet they will seeing as they just did sequels to every animated film they've ever made and how well the Pixar films did) do you think they'll be any good? No mention of Toy Story 2 because that was done Pixar while these new ones by Disney who lets be honest haven't really done so well in the animation business for quite awhile. |
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Sketchee
Posts: 65 |
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It was largely thought in 1996 when Disney was first bidding for the license that they wanted to shelve the films and prevent them from competing with Disney movies. I think after all these years of very low key releases, no releases and delays that the theory has still yet to be discredited.
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Tenchi
Posts: 4466 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Nah, if Disney wanted the films not to be seen by the general public, they would have just let the domestic anime distributors get the rights to sell just to the fandom niche.
They're mostly quality films and there's enough of a market for them in North America for the profits to be interesting to Disney, but they aren't films that, even if given full wide releases with saturation-level advertising campaigns, would likely ever be embraced by the general North American public nearly as much as the stuff Disney and Pixar and Dreamworks put out, for a myriad of reasons. Pixar and Dreamworks are more rightly considered the prime threat to Disney Feature Animation's dominance of the North American market for children's animated film, not Ghibli, but Disney certainly didn't bury the Pixar films. |
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Romuska
 Subscriber Posts: 797 |
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You know, it's kind of sad when Yu Gi Oh the movie gets more advertising than any Miyazaki film. OH yeah, and as for
Why are we hearing this from you and not from Disney themselves? That's what a lot of us are upset about. You're telling me the movies got delayed for 6 months and then some for a stupid trailer? That's great, so what's their excuse for the poor promotion and production qualities of the Kiki and Laputa DVDs? I think it's time to pull out some cash, but a regionless DVD player and get some R2 imports because I'm just plain out of patience for this. |
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Sword of Whedon
Posts: 683 |
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Because Disney doesn't talk to the public, pretty much period. Either you're in the loop, or out of the loop, and the people who are in the loop typically would not ask about these titles, nor would the people know about them who talk to the press. They typically only have enough room in the promotional brain for the titles they're hocking big over the next 3 month period Kiki sold over 1 million copies in 1998, and was named "Children's video of the year" by Entertainment Weekly. Spirited/Kiki/Laputa did pretty spanky for them on DVD. The big thing is that they know these facts: 1- The discs will sell a certain basic number no matter when they put them out 2- Howl's is rumored to be coming out sometime next spring, and is rumored to have a "just in time" screening in order to qualify for Oscar contention. Supposedly it'll get released some time in Marchor so for the wide release 3- Marketing people like tie-ins. 1,2,3 and there you go. |
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TurnerJ
Posts: 481 Location: Highland Park, NJ |
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[quote="Sword of Whedon]Kiki sold over 1 million copies in 1998, and was named "Children's video of the year" by Entertainment Weekly. Spirited/Kiki/Laputa did pretty spanky for them on DVD. The big thing is that they know these facts:
1- The discs will sell a certain basic number no matter when they put them out 2- Howl's is rumored to be coming out sometime next spring, and is rumored to have a "just in time" screening in order to qualify for Oscar contention. Supposedly it'll get released some time in Marchor so for the wide release 3- Marketing people like tie-ins. 1,2,3 and there you go.[/quote] I'm actually not sure what you mean by "pretty spanky," to tell you the truth. Could you please spell out a proper definition of this term? Anyway, I agree with your three points. They sound a lot more reasonable and intelligent than much of the bashing that I've seen around most forums lately. I also agree that the Miyazaki R1 DVD releases were pretty successful in the U.S., AFAIK. Actually, from what I understand, SPIRITED AWAY was the strongest seller. CASTLE IN THE SKY was the sixth best-selling Disney DVD of its opening week (#1 being SPIRITED AWAY) and, whatever critics or fans said about the dub or the DVD itself (personally, I was happy with the release and the dub and don't see much reason to import the R2), it was the second best-selling Ghibli DVD of last year. Like SPIRITED, it continues to sell. Strangely, though, while DVD EMPIRE.com doesn't seem to have a ranking number for All-Time Sales and/or Current Sales Ranking for LAPUTA, it still ranks as the 18th best-selling ANIME DVD at their website. KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE was the third-best selling Ghibli DVD; although it actually debuted low on the charts--probably because most people probably owned it already. Make no mistake, though, the Miyazaki DVDs DID find audiences, and given that I was very pleased with all of them currently available in the U.S.(including PRINCESS MONONOKE and CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO), I have no reason to doubt that the upcoming ones will be excellent as well. Yeah, it does stink that we have to wait yet again--I was just as excited and intoxicated as most people were about the new date--but hopefully, Disney will announce a release date soon. It's just frustrating to know WHEN. -Jon Turner |
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