Studio Ghibli was about to be sued by Harvey Weinstein

Former head of Studio Ghibli's international division, Steve Alpert, has released his autobiographical book entitled “Sharing a House with the Never-Ending Man: 15 Years at Studio Ghibli,” in which he narrates his working career in studios and, In one of his passages, Steve revealed that the famous studio was almost sued by producer Harvey Weinstein during the times of the release of the movie Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke) in theaters in the United States.


According to the biography, Harvey Weinstein (then the president of Miramax), demanded that the movie Mononoke no Hime be edited so that its duration would be reduced from 135 minutes to only 90. Since the director, Hayao Miyazaki, flatly refused to Making changes to the movie, Harvey was furious and replied to the director with the following: “If you don't cut this m ***** movie, you will never work in this p *** industry again! Do you understand imb ****? Never!".

However, since both Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki maintained their refusal to alter the length of the film, Mononoke no Hime was released in its full, uncut version. In addition, this generated a myth that Hayao Miyazaki sent the American producer a samurai sword with a written message that stated: "No cuts."

It is not the first time that Studio Ghibli has had problems with its distributors because they never accept requests to make modifications to their films. In 1985 they also had a bad experience with the overseas release of the movie Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa.

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