Trivia / Tales from Earthsea

• Crossdressing Voices: Yūko Tanaka (who previously played Lady Eboshi in Princess Mononoke) voices Lord Cob in the Japanese version.
• Disowned Adaptation: Ursula K. Le Guin's response to the film can be found here. In a nutshell, she thought the film suffered in comparison to her own novels and that it was overly violent and preachy, and that the characters are too white (which is a serious issue for Le Guin), but that the movie was merely dissatisfying rather than outright bad. Le Guin was also disappointed by the movie as a fan of Studio Ghibli, and she thought that the animation seemed rushed and less detailed when compared to their previous work. Given Le Guin's vehemently negative opinions of all prior attempts at adapting her work to other media this can be interpreted as getting off lightly.
• Playing Against Type: Comedian Cheech Marin plays Hare. While the character is still a hammy villain, he's also very serious and vile, a definite change of pace from Marin's usual voice roles.
• Screwed by the Network: Due to lackluster critical reception in Asian releases, most Western releases were heavily meddled with and much more limited than past Ghibli releases. The film was only released in 23 cinemas across the entire United Kingdom and Ireland (in both dubbed and subbed versions), five cinemas in Australia (sub-only), and two small cinemas in Spain (sub-only). The United States got it the worst, as they had to wait four years for the film to see a release, in only five cinemas and as a dub-only release.
• Underage Casting: Blaire Restaneo was about twelve/thirteen years old when she voiced the seventeen-year-old Therru.
• What Could Have Been: Hayao Miyazaki offered to adapt the book in the early '90s, but Ursula K. LeGuinn, not being familiar with his work, turned him down. By the time she watched his films and became convinced he could do justice to the book, he had (briefly) retired and she had to settle for his son.

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