Spirited Away (English)

It was released in American theaters on September 20, 2002 by The Walt Disney Company.

Cast

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Production
John Lasseter, Pixar animator and a fan and friend of Miyazaki, would often sit with his staff and watch Miyazaki's work when encountering story problems. After seeing Spirited Away Lasseter was ecstatic. Upon hearing his reaction to the film, Disney CEO Michael Eisner asked Lasseter if he would be interested in introducing Spirited Away to an American audience. Lasseter obliged by agreeing to serve as the executive producer for the English adaptation. Following this, several others began to join the project: Beauty and the Beast co-director Kirk Wise and Aladdin co-producer Donald W. Ernst joined Lasseter as director and producer of Spirited Away, respectively. Screenwriters Cindy Davis Hewitt and Donald H. Hewitt penned the English-language dialogue, which they wrote in order to match the characters' original Japanese-language lip movements. Advertising was limited, with Spirited Away being mentioned in a small scrolling section of the film section of Disney.com; Disney had sidelined their official website for Spirited Away and given the film a comparatively small promotional budget. Marc Hairston argues that this was a justified response to Studio Ghibli's retention of the merchandising rights to the film and characters, which limited Disney's ability to properly market the film.

Theaters
The dub premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2002 and was later released in the United States on September 20, 2002. The film grossed $450,000 in its opening weekend from 26 theatres. Spirited Away had very little marketing, less than Disney's other B-films, with a maximum of 151 theatres showing the film in 2002. After the 2003 Oscars, it expanded to 714 theatres. It ultimately grossed around $10 million by September 2003.

Home media
In North America, the film was released on DVD and VHS formats by Walt Disney Home Entertainment on 15 April 2003. The attention brought by the Oscar win resulted in the film becoming a strong seller. The bonus features include Japanese trailers, a making-of documentary which originally aired on Nippon Television, interviews with the North American voice actors, a select storyboard-to-scene comparison and The Art of Spirited Away, a documentary narrated by actor Jason Marsden. The movie was released on Blu-ray by and North America by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on 16 June 2015. GKIDS and Shout! Factory re-issued the film on Blu-ray and DVD on 17 October 2017 following the expiration of Disney's previous deal with Studio Ghibli in the country in North America. (Its release was handled through GKIDS' exclusive North American distribution partner Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.) On 12 November 2019, GKIDS and Shout! Factory issued a North-America-exclusive Spirited Away collector's edition, which includes the film on Blu-ray, and the film's soundtrack on CD, as well as a 40-page book with statements by Toshio Suzuki and Hayao Miyazaki, and essays by film critic Kenneth Turan and film historian Leonard Maltin. Along with the rest of the Studio Ghibli films, Spirited Away was released on digital markets in the United States for the first time, on 17 December 2019.

In the United Kingdom, the film was released on DVD and VHS as a rental release through independent distributor High Fliers Films PLC following the film's limited theatrical release. It was later officially released on DVD in the UK on 29 March 2004, with the distribution being done by Optimum Releasing themselves. In 2006, the DVD was reissued as a single-disc release (without the second one) with packaging matching other releases in Optimum's "The Studio Ghibli Collection" range. The then-renamed StudioCanal UK released the movie on Blu-ray on 24 November 2014, A British 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition, similar to other Studio Ghibli anniversary editions released in the UK, was released on 25 October 2021.

In the United States, the 2015 Blu-ray release grossed $9,925,660 from 557,613 physical units sold as of 21 February 2021. In the United Kingdom, the film's Studio Ghibli anniversary release appeared several times on the annual lists of best-selling foreign language film on home video, ranking number six in 2015, number five in 2016, and number one in 2019.

Television
In the United Kingdom, the film was watched by 670,000 viewers on BBC Two in 2010. This made it the year's most-watched foreign-language film on the BBC, and the year's second highest foreign film on UK television. Spirited Away was later watched by 300,000 UK viewers on BBC2 in 2011, making it the year's most-watched foreign-language film on BBC Two. Combined, the film drew a 970,000 UK television viewership on BBC Two between 2010 and 2011.