Disney helps foot bill for Ghibli's next film

Walt Disney Company announced it will invest in MY NEIGHBOR YAMADA (TONARI NO YAMADA-KUN), the next film Studio Ghibli is animating after the one-time 1997 Japanese box-office leader PRINCESS MONONOKE (MONONOKE HIME). Studio co-founder Takahata Isao will return to the director's chair for the first time since HEISEI TANUKI GASSEN PON-POKO (1994). The film's story is based on a 1991-96 comic strip by Ishii Hisaichi that ran in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun. Its co-sponsor Tokuma Shoten is scheduling the film for summer of 1999 in Japan, and Disney plans to invest $1.23 million (160 million yen) in the 16-billion-yen production in exchange for North American and European distribution rights.

PRINCESS MONONOKE's Japanese home video, North American theatrical release announced

Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Tokuma Japan Communication announced plans to release the 1997 film PRINCESS MONONOKE (MONONOKE HIME) on home video in Japan, while Miramax is projecting the tentative date of its theatrical release in North America for early 1999. On 26 June, Tokuma will distribute MONONOKE on Japanese laser disc for ¥7800, and Buena Vista will do the same on Japanese video tape for ¥4500. (Tokuma Japan Communication sold the comprehensive Ghibli ga Ippai laser box set of Ghibli films in 1996. Under the same Ghibli ga Ippai label, Buena Vista is in the process of re-releasing each of the earlier Ghibli films on video tapes for lowered prices.) Miramax also announced the film's projected release in North America next year and the enlistment of novellist and comic book writer Neil Gaiman (SANDMAN, NEVERWHERE) for the English script adaptation. Buena Vista and Miramax obtained the rights to release MONONOKE and other Studio Ghibli works through an 1996 agreement between the parent companies Walt Disney Company and Tokuma Shoten.

Former X-Japan member hangs himself

Solo rock musician and former X-Japan member Matsumoto Hideto died the morning of 2 May in Tokyo in an apparent suicide. He was 33. Acquaintances discovered him hanging by his neck in his home early that Saturday, and rushed him to a local hospital where he died later in the morning. "Hide" was the guitarist for the group X Japan before it disbanded last year. In 1993, the group created X², a music video montage shown on the famous building-side Altavision wide screen television in Tokyo's Shibuya shopping district. The studio Madhouse, director Rin Taro, and character designer Yuuki Nobuteru animated part of X² with characters from the CLAMP manga X. This collaboration would lead to the X animated feature film (1996), for which X-Japan performed the ending theme Forever Love.