If this is the end, it's an ignoble way to go.
When hugely acclaimed anime director Satoshi Kon began production on The Dreaming Machine he already knew that he was fighting a fight with cancer that he was doomed to lose. Kon knew he was unlikely to survive through until the end of production and the one request he made of his backers at production studio Madhouse was that they would see the project through even if he was not there to oversee it. And when Kon passed in 2010 it appeared that would indeed be the case with directing duties being passed to Yoshimi Itazu who was to work from Kon's detailed instructions.
But then in August of 2011 Madhouse founder Masao Maruyama acknowledged at a fan convention that production on the film had been shut down with just over a third of the picture completed due to lack of finances. And today the official website for the film simply went away. What was once yume-robo.com is now just a 403 error.
This is, quite simply, a shameful and depressing situation. Finances within the industry never come easy but when you're talking about the final work by the director of Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Paprika, surely there must be someone out there who can step up and see it through.
When hugely acclaimed anime director Satoshi Kon began production on The Dreaming Machine he already knew that he was fighting a fight with cancer that he was doomed to lose. Kon knew he was unlikely to survive through until the end of production and the one request he made of his backers at production studio Madhouse was that they would see the project through even if he was not there to oversee it. And when Kon passed in 2010 it appeared that would indeed be the case with directing duties being passed to Yoshimi Itazu who was to work from Kon's detailed instructions.
But then in August of 2011 Madhouse founder Masao Maruyama acknowledged at a fan convention that production on the film had been shut down with just over a third of the picture completed due to lack of finances. And today the official website for the film simply went away. What was once yume-robo.com is now just a 403 error.
This is, quite simply, a shameful and depressing situation. Finances within the industry never come easy but when you're talking about the final work by the director of Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Paprika, surely there must be someone out there who can step up and see it through.
Maybe the finances went so bad they couldn't even afford the domain name.
Sad news indeed. Not a big fan of Kon's later work though, but the man deserves it to have his final film finished. No matter what you think of him, he meant a whole lot for the industry.
I loved "Redline" and I think we all thought it was pretty ballsy of Studio Madhouse to invest so many man-years of work into a project that most likely would never earn back its cost.
Unfortunately, if that is one of the reasons why they now have no funding left for "The Dreaming Machine" then that is one hell of a price to pay...
Wish there was something to be done. Kon was a master and his final film was obviously incredibly important to him. Maybe foreign investors will step up.
Time for them to make a kickstarter page.
Or maybe Aronofsky could leverage something. Dude was certainly aware of Kon's work.
Fucking depressing.
Well, I've contacted people at that company on how to raise some cash. Hopefully, when Netflix and Hulu head to Japan, they'll finally embrace the streaming anime model over there, and the Kon family and/or estate can get finally build an audience for his work. Of course, if certain nameless directors of certain hit ballet movies which cribbed from Perfect Blue were really buddy-buddy, they'd make a "donation" to save the film.