Australia's Madman Entertainment Adds Ghibli's Arrietty
The Australian anime licensee Madman Entertainment announced that it has acquired Studio Ghibli's anime film Karigurashi no Arrietty. The movie is based on Mary Norton's 1952 fantasy novel The Borrowers. According to the official page launched for the film and announcement, Arrietty will be screened in Australian movie theaters in 2011.
The film will be part of Madman's Studio Ghibli Collection, which includes most of the studio's titles such as Ponyo, Howl's Moving Castle, and Spirited Away.
In 2009, Studio Ghibli announced that it would make an animated film based on The Borrowers novel. This past February, the studio confirmed that Hiromasa Yonebayashi would make his directorial debut with the film. Arrietty opened in Japan on July 17 and attracted one million viewers over its first weekend. Nishioka announced on Tuesday that the film has been seen over 7.5 million times, an all-time record for a first-time director in Japan.
Arrietty is only the fourth feature film not directed by Miyazaki or his mentor and Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata. The other films are Whisper of the Heart (Yoshifumi Kondô), The Cat Returns (Hiroyuki Morita), and Tales from Earthsea (Goro Miyazaki). (Tomomi Mochizuki directed the television special Ocean Waves in 1993.)
source: ANIME NEWS NETWORK