Sunday, February 05, 2012

Arriety From Studio Ghibli

The WSJ details Diz Co's oncoming animated release:

... Disney hopes to boost Studio Ghibli's box-office punch with the English-language release of "The Secret World of Arrietty" ...

Disney will open "Arrietty" on at least 1200 screens, in what will be its largest Ghibli release in the U.S. As comparison, "Ponyo" opened on about 900 screens, and "Spirited Away" opened on 750 screens.

"I just want to do everything I can to help make sure people can go see them because they're just magnificent films that are very different than any other animated films these days," [John] Lasseter said in an interview. ...

If The Secret World of Arriety get any kind of traction at the box office, the Mouse will probably consider it a victory.

Forty million? More?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hopefully. It's one of Ghibli's best (and most beautiful) cartoons, and the best version of The Borrowers that's been made (including the BBC version last December). It's been available on Blu-Ray from Japan since last summer, and is quite spectacular.

I sure hope Disney is still planning an update of Norton's other books, which they made into "Bedknobs and Broomsticks." They announced it in development a few years back, but haven't heard much about it since.

Anonymous said...

Been looking forward to this one, after a protracted TWENTY MONTH delay on the U.S. theatrical release. Seriously, what took so long?

As adaptations of The Borrowers go, 1985's Here Come the Littles wasn't half bad. Some real exciting action sequences, more perilous and scary than you might see in today's animated features. It's currently streaming on Netflix if you want to whet your appetite for Arriety.

Chris Sobieniak said...

I see someone's a fan of The Littles! That wasn't a bad film either going by my pleasant childhood memories thereof.

I'm lucky I'll had no problems seeing this new film at all (usually whenever there's the one film I may have an interest to see, like "The Artist", I end up noticing it's getting played across town in the only theater designated to show those type of movies, since nobody cares to try to make these more accessible to those like me locally).

Anonymous said...

The sense of scale on Arriety is just mind blowing. And the story is the subtle and poignant. Beautiful movie, go see it.

Anonymous said...

There were actually TWO different books series dealing with tiny people. "The Littles" had tails, IIRC. The Borrowers(the Clock family)didn't.
Mary Norton wrote the Borrowers series, which debuted 10 years before the Littles was published in 1964. Both sets of miniature people lived secretly in the walls of "big people" houses. Both books are charming, though Mary Norton is probably the better writer.

Anonymous said...

Any word about Disney distributing Kokuriko Zaka Kara?

Anonymous said...

Since no one's heard of that, I doubt it.

Anonymous said...

Any word about Disney distributing Kokuriko Zaka Kara?

English please.

Since no one's heard of that, I doubt it.

I Googled it and the proper way to say it on and ENGLISH SPEAKING blog is From Up on Poppy Hill.

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