According to Screen Daily's Tokyo correspondent, Mark Schilling, Disney has acquired North American rights to Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, which has broken all box office records in Japan (see 'Miyazaki Film Sets Box Office Record').  Disney signed an agreement in 1997 giving the U.S.'s number one animation studio the rights to all the Studio Ghibli films, but so far only one Ghibli film, Princess Mononoke, has received theatrical distribution in the U.S., and the result was a disappointing $2.37 million gross for a film that took in $150 million in Japan.

Hoping to learn from their mistakes with Princess Mononoke, Disney is acting quickly on Spirited Away.  According to Screen Daily, Disney has already hired Pixar honcho John Lassiter to serve as creative consultant on Spirited Away; and more importantly, the studio has vowed to act quickly to get Spirited Away released in the U.S., possibly even as early as July of this year.  In many ways Disney's Miramax Studio did a good job on Princess Mononoke (hiring Neil Gaiman to work on the adaptation, etc.), but the process was lengthy, with the film opening in the U.S. more than two years after its Japanese debut, and Disney wants to cut down on the lag time.