Tales From Earthsea

The film 'tales from earthsea' is something that i've been waiting for, for such a long time, its more or less a topic of frustration for me, and i'm sure for studio ghibli, the movie house who created and distributed this film. it seems that the sci-fi channel hold rights to the name, from a mini series that they made that follows the same story line that the movie does, which is taken from a fantasy novel of the same name. as it turns out, the sci fi channel isn't willing to give up their rights and are planning on holding onto the rights until they expire in 2009. because the rights only pertain to north america, the rest of the world has already had the theater premier and the dvd release come and go; i find it strange that north america is going to be the last one to get rights to distribution of this movie. i think the biggest tragedy of this situation is that this movie is the fact that 'tales from earthsea' is the directorial debut of goro miyazaki, son of the creater of studio ghibli and most acclaimed director from studio ghibli, hayao miyazaki. hopefully this wrench thrown into the works doesn't hinder his directorial career. this film wasn't originally set to be directed by goro. before hayao's first film 'nausicca, in the valley of the wind' was created, he contacted ursula guin (the writer of tales from earthsea trilogy) with his interest in adapting her books into film. he was turned down. only after his award winning movie 'spirited away' was released, did she contact him and tell him she would be honored if he would direct the movie of her film, however, hayao was busy directing 'howl's moving castle' so the project was handed down to goro, under close supervision from the ghibli veterans. as it turns out, the sci fi channel went and made a version of the books into a lack-luster tv miniseries without the blessings of the author, thus taking hold of the name rights, preventing goro from releasing the movie until at least 2009. i myself don't understand why they wouldn't sign over rights, so this movie can see the light of day in north america. if anyone knows of a petition site i can sign to get this going a bit sooner, drop me a line. here's the trailer with the theme song, cheers.