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NEWS: Producer Talks about Highlander

Heh heh, I found it pretty interesting that Imagi use to own Madhouse

We owned at one point Madhouse in Japan, which is not the top tier but it's in the second tier level of anime houses.

And we wanted to do a project that's taking a western iconic project and do it in the anime process. It wasn't easy because the Japanese in anime, the director is the director. There is no producer coming and giving notes. He gets up in the morning, he goes there and this is the way the movie's going to go. They don't follow conventional storylines of beginning, middle and end. It's really whatever they feel like.

"But with Kawajiri, we were able to get him to tell the story in a more traditional western way. All the 'Spirited Away' and all the ones that have gone on have not really rocketed hugely overseas because in our opinion, they're not as accessible in the story. Visually, they're phenomenal and we love it but it's story for us and the Japanese don't necessarily have happy endings.

Yes, the Animatrix and Princess Mononoke did poorly on dvd. Oh, wait!

No one I know downloaded the Animatrix before buying it

and while that isn't exactly an accurate poll of the consumers who purchased it I think it's pretty reasonable to consider that many of the people who bought the Animatrix DVD's did so because it was Matrix related

or heard about it through other sources.

As for the DVD sales, it is interesting as I checked Billboards charts (which is still only preliminary top 10 for 2006 releases) and 2000 charts and Howl's wasn't mentioned in that top 10 and Princess Mononoke wasn't on the top seller charts either and since I had to sign in to most sites I found the charts on to see where exactly it fell in the ranks I didn't really want to sign up just for that info. I'd certainly like to see the links to those rankings though if I can offer them.

You're talking a handful of titles here and generally anime films don't sell well,

Now again, don't get me wrong, I'm not defending this guy, but while he might not sound like such a good person, although I think he might still be a bit over-vilified here,

Then they would have bought the Riddick and Van Helsing cartoons for the same reason.

But why would they buy a collection from anime directors they don't even know, just because it has "The Matrix" on it? I mean, yeah, the game made money, but as soon as it got bad WOM, the second one didn't fare as well.

Well first off, Billboard's specialty is music sales, not dvd sales. Second, if you want links, try these two for starters.

They sell well enough, which is what matters in the business.

Sorry, but I don't like a guy who trashes a genre he's exploiting for cash. If he thinks American productions are better, than he should just produce American cartoons.

Here's a synopsis

But let's face it, Riddick is a significantly less popular franchise than the Matrix and Dark Fury is just a short that wasn't received very well. Animatrix on the other hand was quite well received,

the fact it's based on a huge franchise at the peak of its popularity that is certainly a contributing factor.

Unfortunately the first one only shows weekly sales,

Yes, but selling "well enough" isn't what he was referring too.

I think what he was trying to say is that what most anime provides as far as story goes doesn't really work well with a mainstream audience, and he's probably right there.

Just like his comment that Madhouse is a 2nd tier studio isn't a huge deal to me because all it seemed like he was saying is that they're no Ghibli caliber studio, and indeed they are not,

Thus supporting my point, while contradicting Munroe's argument that anime does "poorly", because audiences can't deal with its "writing" style.

But it still did well, in spite of people complaining about Reloaded.

For an anime film which got mixed reviews and a marginal release, that's damn good. It did better than Serenity, anyway.

He was referring to the films not being successful. But the industry is obviously very lucrative, even in spite of recent changes, if his company's trying to jump on the band-wagon.

So then why would he make these "niche" shows into big-budget films?

Ghibli can produce a movie every few years, but Madhouse has at least 4-5 shows in the pipe-line every year. And people who' ve compared The Girl Who Leaped Through Time with Gedo Senkai might also disagree.

don't' say that yet, it could definately be a shocker.

Perhaps, but it's still isolated and I'm still fairly confident that there were other contributing factors involved in its sales numbers.

It did, however many people, such as myself, were still optimistic that Revolutions would make up for Reloaded.

True, but Serenity is also somewhat of a niche title.

Maybe, but if I took Madhouses titles and put them up against Ghibli's I'm pretty confident I'd put Ghibli's a tier above them.We're not talking the difference between best and worst, only the difference between amazing and great.