PRINCESS MONONOKE DVD Release Delayed

By: Andrew Osmond
Date: Tuesday, July 25, 2000

Buena Vista has amended its video plans for the Miyazaki anime film Princess Mononoke. As reported earlier this month, the DVD edition had been scheduled for release on August 29th, with English and French soundtracks but without the original Japanese. However, Buena Vista has now given the DVD an 'unscheduled' release date. A press release promises more details to follow.

The Miyazaki fan-site Nausicaa.net, which has contacts at both Buena Vista and Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli, is optimistic that the rescheduled DVD will include the original dialogue after all. 'We strongly believe, but have not yet confirmed, that the Mononoke DVD will be changed and released at an unspecified date in the future (hopefully later this year).

'We asked Buena Vista staff about the exact nature of the change in content, but they could not give any details to the public at this time. We suspect, but have not yet confirmed, that the DVD will be changed to include the original Japanese language dialogue, and might also include English subtitles.'

The original 'no-Japanese-track' announcement provoked thousands of Mononoke fans to make their disappointment known. On the Internet, the Nausicaa.net site ran a poll, and DVDTalk collected a petition. The combined result, estimated at over 5000 unique signatures, was presented to Buena Vista. Other fans sent snail-mail letters to Buena Vista direct.

Nausicaa.net concludes, 'We suspect this result convinced Buena Vista to delay the release of the English/French-only DVD so that fans' wishes could be granted. We wish to emphasize that this is only our best guess, but we certainly wish to thank those who responded to the poll, signed the petition, or better yet, wrote to Buena Vista with your request that the Mononoke DVD be subtitled.'


The rental VHS edition of Mononoke, featuring the voices of Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Minnie Driver and Gillian Anderson, will still be released on August 29th. It is not confirmed when the sell-through VHS will be available.