Mamoru Oshii’s latest epic, The Sky Crawlers, has been picked up by Sony Pictures, according to Variety. Apparently they scored the deal the first night of the Toronto Film Fest, where the film had its North American premiere.

Hayao Miyazaki, Mamoru Oshii, and Takeshi Kitano (you know…Beat Takeshi?) are all travelling to Venice together. Well, maybe not “together,” but at the same time. Why? The 65th Venice Film Festival, of course, which will be screening their Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea, The Sky Crawlers, and Achilles and the Tortoise, respectively, according to TokyoGraph.

And while we’re talking about Japanese cinema, here’s a piece of news from Twitch: Haruki Murakami’s novel Norwegian Wood, is being developed into a (Japanese-language) film by French-Vietnamese auteur Tran Anh Hung. It’s not anime-related, obviously, but the book was particularly popular with Japan’s youth, so I thought I’d include it.

Famitsu has awesomeness, like the above. And by awesomeness, I mean life-size versions of the planes we’ll be seeing in Sky Crawlers, Mamoru Oshii’s upcoming pilot drama.

I’d ooh and ahh a bit more, but alas, I have to get to the airport and go home…finally!

Okay, I’ve got a lot of items here, so let’s get started, shall we?

Anime:

- ICv2 took part in a conference call between Navarre and industry analysts. Navarre has made most of its money via FUNimation, while other subsidiaries are falling behind in sales, CEO Cary Deacon says. FUNi has acquired an even bigger chunk of the market share thanks to the demise of Geneon and the slowing of ADV, of course. Deacon also offered that there are possibilities for further acquisitions within the US anime industry, but that they have no plans currently.

- Gainax has officially announced that they’ll be adapting Shikabane Hime, but we already knew that, didn’t we?

- On the digital distro front, GyaO is going to run Tower of Druaga in its entirety online for free (Japan-only) starting June 14, while Bandai Networks is running the first episode of the original Gundam for free on DoCoMo’s FOMA mobile service.

Manga:

- On the Borders front, they’ve sold off their storefronts in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, says ICv2, and MangaBlog’s Brigid checks out a local Borders and learns that they’re doing pretty well selling manga.

- Speaking of Brigid, she’s posted a press release from DrMaster announcing their acquisition of the man hua Divine Melody, by Real/Fake Princess creator I-Huan.

- Tiamat talks about Seven Seas Entertainment, and she doesn’t think the outlook is good for the young publisher, which has been pretty quiet since their enthusiastic announcements back at Anime Expo ‘07.

- More TOKYOPOP news: they’ve set up shop with Big Tent, which will handle the worldwide licenses for I Luv Halloween, Princess Ai, Bizenghast, Dramacon, and Van Von Hunter. Of course, it’s not the news we want– an announcement of what manga Tpop will (and won’t) continue publishing.

- Comics distributor Diamond is in the dog house with Chris Butcher, who notes that even though Diamond lists the first four volumes of Vagabond as “out of stock, no backorders,” they’re completely available to retailers– through Simon and Schuster.

Music:
- Singer/songwriter Masaaki Endou has released an anime cover album, which will feature, among others, the OP from GaoGaiGar, the Power Rangers theme (not an anime, but I suppose we can allow it), the Stellvia theme, and a slew of others.

- When do I get to report on a Cyndi Lauper tribute album on an anime blog? When Jpoppers Puffy, Chara, Tommy february6, Sowelu, Nana Kitade, and others are involved in the project. Yeeeeah.

- Singer Ayaka (she sung “Okaeri,” the theme for the currently-running Absolute Boyfriend drama) will be singing the theme for Mamoru Oshii’s Sky Crawlers– or rather, she already has: it’s “Konya mo Hoshi ni Dakarete,” from her album coming out later this month. It was originally going to be an image song, but Oshii decided it meshed so well with his work that he’d make it the official theme.

Games:
- We now have a date for the Haruhi Wii game (which comes with that figure I posted about yesterday): it’ll hit stores November 27th.

ANN reports that an “enhanced” version of the original Ghost in the Shell film is going to hit theaters in Japan on July 12th. They’ve even regathered most of the cast to rerecord a number of scenes, in addition to a new soundtrack and a new voice actor for the Puppet Master, Yoshiko Sakakibara.

It’ll hit theaters a month before director Mamoru Oshii’s newest opus, the more family-friendly Sky Crawlers. Personally, I’d aim for a double-feature– how awesome would that be?

Twitch has word of a few of the cast members for Mamoru Oshii’s newest film Sky Crawlers, all of whom are actually potentially known to a regular Hollywood audience: Rinko Kikuchi (of Babel, who also did a voice for Genius Party in ‘07), Ryo Kase (of Letters from Iwo Jima, and also Mayama in the live-action Honey and Clover movie), and Chiaki Kuriyama (Kill Bill, Battle Royale; also acted in my favorite jdrama’s movie Kisarazu Cat’s Eye: World Series as Ayako and Mizuho in Ju-On: The Curse, aka The Grudge).

Aaaand trailer, courtesy of Twitch:

For those unaware, Jonah is the name of the guy who puts together Anime News Service, which was on hiatus since…christ, I dunno, May or something? He does that sometimes. Silly otaku, having a life.

Anyway, I just noticed that he’s been back at least since 9/1, and he seems to have been in quite a tizzy news-wise. (That’s what you get for returning during Evangeliwon’s opening weekend!)

That said, among the notables: