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Spirited Away Set for 800 Theatre Rerelease
Robotech_Master writes "According to the website of Jerry Beck, a 20-year-animation industry veteran and one of the co-founders of Streamline Animation, when Spirited Away won the Oscar, it also "won the right to be re-released to 800 theatres this Friday. Disney will be announcing plans to re-release the Japanese masterpiece in theatres later today." When I emailed Beck to ask him his source, he said it was someone within the Disney publicity department and it would be made public sometime today. According to Spirited Away's numbers page at Rotten Tomatoes, it peaked during its first run at 151 screens. Wonder how it'll do this time around?"
Also Kiki's Delivery Service will be out April 15.
The DVD will be out in three weeks. So for the price of two tickets, you can actually own it!
I for one am more than happy to see that Spirited Away will be in theaters again, but will the fact that it's coming out on DVD in the states in April hurt ticket sales?
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
There's not a whole lot of kids stuff out now. You've got spring break everywhere. They should release it in 3000 theaters.
The mouse has a love hate relationship with the movie. They want the money it will make, but they don't want it to overshadow the in house animation.
Here's the press release from Disney...
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Yes, but Spirited Away isn't a Disney cartoon (its not even dubbed to English by Disney... Pixar was in charge of that) Its a Studio Ghibli animation directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
If you don't mind a show that isn't crammed with nonstop action, you might just like it. The pacing can be slow at times compared to the latest hollywood Blow Em Up, but there are still a number of action and suspense sequences.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
maybe media companies shouldn't promote lots of crappy bands so they can charge you $18 for a good band's cd
Disney is just the distributor. Miyazaki-san is the brains behind this.
While it tickles me pink that this wonderful movie is getting another big-screen release, I doubt it will do any better this time than it did last time.
Spirited Away is just too Japanese/Asian for middle-Americans to get.
I could do three pages of Way Important Stuff which Every Japanese Kid Over Five Already Knows But Gets Glossed Over.
I dragged a bunch of friends to see this during the first release. They left the movie shaking their heads in utter incomprehension. "But don't you see? It all makes sense!" OK. Maybe not.
j.
Further down the page was news that made my day! A live-action Jetsons! Whoopie!
Ugh.
It was just a little poetic license on the part of the submitter.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I think that having more theaters is nice... but they need to sell the movie first... to some audience. The Oscar is nice and all but I doubt there will be too much a correlation between it and increased sales unless it had won for Best Picture.
But the more important problem is the audience. Who is this for? Under 13? Teenagers? Adults? Are they going to show commercials during Saturday mornings between Pokemon and Digimon? Or is this after-school fare?
I still think the biggest problem is that Disney doesn't know what to do with these films. They don't fit into their standard G rating pipeline so the films end up showing on 100 screens and getting attended to by the film heads only. Too bad.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Disney is in the unenviable position of submarining their own works here. In one corner, you have 'Lilo and Stitch', the film, depending on who you beleive, Disney was lobbying to win 'Best Animated Picture' vs. 'Spirited Away'.
Disney has typically treated its Miyazaki/Ghibli licenses just like every other kind non-in-house animation they acquire (Many DIC titles. First season Sailor Moon is a notable example). They'll sell it, but they will not spend adequate resources on it or promote it in any way that will compete with their own films.
They spent considerable effort creating excellent dubbs on Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away, but simply will not promote those films in any way like they will their own releases. (I have yet to get a Kiki action figure at Burger King.)
'Spirited Away/Sen to Chihiro' is a true work of art. Disney knows it. Miyazaki knows it. The people who've seen it know it. It *deserved* to win BAP. By winning, however, it takes away from 'Lilo and Stitch'. By rereleasing 'Spirited Away', Disney is effectively submarining a possible 'Lilo and Stitch' rerelease. They're also forced to tacitly admit that Miyazaki and Studio Ghibi produces better stuff than they do.
By not re-releasing 'Spirited Away', Disney is in the even more awkward position of trying to explain why they're submarining a film that's won BAP simply because it's not their own work.
Congratulations Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli! I will be taking everyone I know and can get to go to the rerelease.
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Failed at the box office? What box office?
You know where I got to watch it? I watched it in a nearby university's 100 seat theater. This is the kind of coverage Disney gave the film: very little advertisement, very few showings. Is there even a "box office" for universities for it to fail at?
Even 800 theatres is nothing compared to what the real box office bombs open at.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The best part of the moviegoing experience is how they mop down the floor between showings with soda & butter 'flavouring'.
I love that.
Yes: http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/video/sen/ -- but. . . it's released by Buena Vista Japan. Disney kicked in 10% of the film's production costs, they got a cut from the theatrical release as well as the video releases. Some of the European video releases are from third-party distributors, Disney may or may not receive funds from those sales.
Does anyone have any figures for how Princess Mononoke did? I imagine that it would be the best indicator for what this will do.
I know Mononoke's theatrical release was lackluster, but that's largely because there were only 8 prints of the movie, and so it slowly wound its way through the country instead of having a real "release" per se. But how were the sales/rentals on the Mononoke DVD?
Philip Sandifer's academic website
Just like "Iron Giant" failed at the box office? Oh, wait. You mean, that failures at the box office are somehow linked to a lack of advertising and publicity?
If Disney actually pushes "Spirited Away" it'll do just fine at the box office.
I had to travel 45 minutes away from my home to find a theatre showing it back in October. More theatres and a bit of publicity can do wonders.
Jory
The first is that there are very often small details in the image that I miss if I'm distracted by subtitles. This is especially true with Miyazaki, I think.
The second is that it's much harder to follow a language like Japanese if you don't have a background in it. I grew up speaking English and studied some French. So it's easy to follow films in French, Spanish and Italian without having to read every last word. Japanese is so different that I don't get anything at all from hearing it. So I have to read the movie instead of watching it.
I haven't seen the subtitled version of Spirited Away, but I had both problems with Metropolis.
By the way, Spirited Away is amazing. If you can, catch it in a theater with a digital projector.
I was lucky enough to get a private showing during the first run. Well, not really private, but there was no one else in the theatre. No one in town knew the movie was there. The print was so clean I think they had not even been turning the projector on. No, it wasn't an 'art house' theatre, but a real multiplex. Off course, there were no lobby cards, newspaper ads, or any other type of promotion.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Movietickets.com, which I got to by going to AMCtheatres.com has times for it already listed on March 28th, and at my local theatre too! Tickets are available to buy right NOW. I'll be there this Friday.
Spirited Away didn't fail, it didn't get a fair run. Look at Treasure Planet...how AWFUL that movie was, and it was a media blitz from Disney. At least "Spirited" got a better shake than Princess Mononoke. We live in Los Angeles for crying out loud, and we had to drive an hour into Pasadena to an obscure arthouse theater and watch it sitting in folding chairs on a screen the size of a medium-sized in-home projection T.V. screen. MEDIUM-sized projection T.V. screen!
Disney really doesn't want the U.S. to suddenly get an uncontrollable craving for non-Disney-produced animation features. The only reason Ghibli has any ties to Disney at all is because Disney doesn't want anime to steamroll over them without them at least having a hand on the pressure-release valve.
No matter how good the anime feature is, if Disney releases it in the U.S., it's popularity will be governed and reduced by the hand of Eisner.
I don't mean to offend anyone's tastes but I really didn't see the big deal with Spirited Away; nor did the two anime fans I saw it in the theater with (some new but empty place near White Plains...). The voice acting was passable and it was a nice little fantasy setting and all but the pacing seemed horribly off. This was one of the few movies I've seen in recent times where I actually checked my watch hoping there wouldn't be much more to go.
/.ers are warned about, or those that only ever enjoy the really esoteric and sort of isolationist-intellectual-film-nut anime. Anyhow, is there anyone else here that didn't really like it so much?
First of all, the main character seemed to be a whiny little girl for far too long, and seemed fairly well-adapted to being enslaved as a bath wench. The main goal she had was to free her parents, but she doesn't actually embark on doing so until at least 2/3 of the way through the film. The bulk of the movie seemed to be clever and well-directed bits that didn't really relate to each other or the main storyline enough to warrant their length or involvement.
Admittedly, I'm usually more drawn to the more action-oriented but intelligent anime (Bebop, NGE, etc) or goofy stuff (FLCL, Excel Saga, w00t!), but I dig the brainy bits of Eva too, as well as Lain, Akira, and even Mononoke, although I hated the way that ended. Am I still just too Western? The only people I know that really enjoyed Spirited Away were either the die-hard anime fans that
Green-voting, republican-registered, socialist-libertarian.
While it tickles me pink that this wonderful movie is getting another big-screen release, I doubt it will do any better this time than it did last time.
Spirited Away is just too Japanese/Asian for middle-Americans to get.
Oh, I hope not. I'd really like to think that The Rest Of Us could appreciate it. True, it's full of Japanese cultural references, but the story is still the classic kid-and-friends-on-a-quest-to-get-home story. Think of it as a Japanese "Wizard of Oz".
There's always hope. After all, no one expected "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" to do anything, and it stuck around the theaters for a year or so. Then again, my rational self doubts it. I'm afraid you're right.
What if life is just a side effect of some other process and God has no idea we exist?
"Hi, I'm geekwench, and I'm an animation addict..."
Silly, but true; I love the illusions created by well-done blobs of ink and paint (or well-done CGI.) Spirited Away was a beautifully made film, and I shuddered when I found out that Disney was handling the US distribution, because I knew that there was no way in hell that they would give it the marketing that it deserved.
Fast-forward past Oscar night: Spirited Away walks away with the gold. I find it absolutely hilarious that Disney in general (and Eisner in particular) is sitting down to a 3-course meal of crow right about now. Much as I liked Lilo and Stitch, it was good because the filmmaker got Disney to stay the hell out of his way for the most part. I've been hoping that somebody would come along to derail the Disney juggernaut for a long time. Don Bluth had potential, but not the budget. Bakshi doesn't have the broad appeal. Pixar became an ally. Dreamworks is still too much in its infancy to really tell. OTOH, Japanese companies have been putting out some amazing stuff for quite a while now, with very little recognition outside of the community of "anime fans." The fact that the Mouse's in-house product lost to the redheaded stepchild has put a nice warm fuzzy feeling in my cynical, coal-black heart. Maybe AMPAS doesn't have its collective head stuck entirely where the sun don't shine after all.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
You're right. I also find most paintings hanging musuems can also be improved by adding some birds and meadow in the background. While you are at it, why don't you colorize Citizen Kane as well?
Interestingly, children seemed to respond very well to the film, despite its length. I think this might be because the film was effective on a level kids could understand, and because young children have not yet been fully programmed by culture as to what they are 'supposed' to find acceptable in the media they are offered. Kids are much more open to alternative ways of thinking than adults, who have been programmed and de-sensitized to such a high degree.
Of course, one might also argue that kids are simply not savvy enough to spot crap when they see it, but I think there's more going on here than that. This film was not crappy in any sense, (except in that it violated a host of Hollywood formula 'rules'.) This film was perhaps my favorite Miyazaki film to date. Very, very smart. Very insightful on many levels. There were some brilliant things done in that film, and the background works were awe inspiring. I came out of the film practically bouncing. --And I typically can't stand Anime. Miyazaki is in a whole other league of film makers. He's not one of the teeming hoards of Japanese animators still dealing with teen angst, sex and self-confidence issues which practically scream from the screens of most Anime. --Nothing wrong with that, mind you. It's obviously a required vent and forum for dealing with such issues in the otherwise unbearable pressure cooker that is Japanese culture. But such things are driven primarily by the subconscious. Miyazaki is waaaay beyond that. Miyazaki is mature in that he works with great skill from the conscious level. He knows what he is doing, and why. He is one of those creators who is in fact able to speak to the subconscious.
A good measure, for me anyway, of a film's worth is whether or not I notice my bum beginning to hurt in the theatre chair. If I do, then obviously I'm not entirely engaged by the film. This is a great, 'benchmark', (sorry), particularly with films which are as long as Spirited Away. Almost three hours!
An interesting experiment you might try is this. .
Rent Raiders of the Lost Ark and watch it. If I am not very much mistaken, then I expect you'll find it to be a rather slow, almost boring film. Amazing, considering that in the eighties, it was one of the fastest, most exciting bits of movie making ever made. I believe that this is an indicator both of just how much the speed of culture has increased, and the level of competition amongst movie makers to make each successive film more exciting than the last. A fine example of cultural programming and de-sensitization.
-Fantastic Lad
Heck, even the nomination helped. Look at Blue Sky. After Ice Age was nominated for an Academy Award, the CG house finalized a multi-picture deal with Fox (which includes films such as Robots and the Ice Age sequel).