‘Little Nemo’: The cult favourite that almost paired George Lucas and Hayao Miyazaki
Their contributions to the industry may have been markedly different, but George Lucas and Hayao Miyazaki have been equally influential figures in modern cinema, with each of them reinventing their chosen medium several times over and becoming icons in the process.
Whereas the former revolutionised the way Hollywood sold, packaged, and merchandised its biggest movies when Star Wars was first released in 1977, before leading the digital revolution from the front after forming Industrial Light & Magic, the latter’s Studio Ghibli became a by-word for animated excellence and the company responsible for many of the artform’s greatest-ever features.
They’ve never worked together directly, although there has been some cross-pollination. One of the key figures in bringing Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli’s films to a wider Western audience was Kathleen Kennedy, who executive produced and oversaw the United States releases of Ponyo, The Secret World of Arrietty, and From Up on Poppy Hill.
Already a Lucasfilm veteran after serving as an associate producer on the original Indiana Jones trilogy, she was hand-picked to become the outfit’s president after Lucas sold up to Disney, with Studio Ghibli being drafted in to create the hand-drawn short Zen – Grogu and Dust Bunnies that crossed over with Spirited Away and released on Disney+.
However, decades beforehand, Lucas and Miyazaki were both being courted for the same project at around the same time, only for neither of them to end up involved. Animated comic strip adaptation Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland spent years in development before finally making it to the screen in 1989, and the creative team initially had its eyes on the biggest names available.
At the beginning of the decade, writer and producer Yutaka Fujioka had approached Lucas – fresh from the success of Star Wars and Indiana Jones – to gauge his interest in serving as a co-producer on the American side of things, but he declined the offer after failing to be convinced by the current draft of the screenplay, although he did recommend cohort Gary Kurtz as his replacement.
Studio Ghibli had yet to be founded, with Miyazaki under the employ of TMS Entertainment at the time, which was owned by Fujioka. He penned another draft of the story that was rejected, but ended up serving as the basis for his own 1986 effort Castle in the Sky. Miyazaki even travelled to the United States with other staff members for a crash course in Americanised character drawing, but despite being considered for the open directing position, he ended up leaving TMS by the end of 1982.
After finally escaping development hell, Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland ended up flopping at the box office before going on to find extended life as a cult favourite that even ended up getting a bizarrely forgettable Jason Momoa-led reboot from Netflix more than 30 years later. Had only a couple of dominoes fallen in the other direction, though, then it could have boasted Lucas and Miyazaki.
