If this is the end, it's an ignoble way to go.
When hugely acclaimed anime director Satoshi Kon began production on The Dreaming Machine he already knew that he was fighting a fight with cancer that he was doomed to lose. Kon knew he was unlikely to survive through until the end of production and the one request he made of his backers at production studio Madhouse was that they would see the project through even if he was not there to oversee it. And when Kon passed in 2010 it appeared that would indeed be the case with directing duties being passed to Yoshimi Itazu who was to work from Kon's detailed instructions.
But then in August of 2011 Madhouse founder Masao Maruyama acknowledged at a fan convention that production on the film had been shut down with just over a third of the picture completed due to lack of finances. And today the official website for the film simply went away. What was once yume-robo.com is now just a 403 error.
This is, quite simply, a shameful and depressing situation. Finances within the industry never come easy but when you're talking about the final work by the director of Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Paprika, surely there must be someone out there who can step up and see it through.
When hugely acclaimed anime director Satoshi Kon began production on The Dreaming Machine he already knew that he was fighting a fight with cancer that he was doomed to lose. Kon knew he was unlikely to survive through until the end of production and the one request he made of his backers at production studio Madhouse was that they would see the project through even if he was not there to oversee it. And when Kon passed in 2010 it appeared that would indeed be the case with directing duties being passed to Yoshimi Itazu who was to work from Kon's detailed instructions.
But then in August of 2011 Madhouse founder Masao Maruyama acknowledged at a fan convention that production on the film had been shut down with just over a third of the picture completed due to lack of finances. And today the official website for the film simply went away. What was once yume-robo.com is now just a 403 error.
This is, quite simply, a shameful and depressing situation. Finances within the industry never come easy but when you're talking about the final work by the director of Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Paprika, surely there must be someone out there who can step up and see it through.