Trivia / Porco Rosso

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• Celebrity Voice Actor:
  • The Japanese version featured veteran film/TV actor Shuichiro Moriyama as Porco, actress/singer Tokiko Kato as Gina and singer Tsunehiko Kamijo as Boss.
  • Disney's English dub featured Michael Keaton as Porco, Cary Elwes as Curtis, and Brad Garrett as Boss.
  • The French dub gives us Jean Reno as Porco.
• Fake American: Englishman Cary Elwes plays the American Donald Curtis.
• God Never Said That: Around 2010, there was an announcement that Ghibli had plans for a sequel to the film titled Porco Rosso: The Last Sortie that would have been set in the Spanish Civil War and would have been directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi and written by Miyazaki. However, it was never actually a production in the first place. While Miyazaki did played around with a sequel, he states in the original interview that doing the story was simply a hobby of his, never saying anything about it being made into a film. The claim that Hiromasa Yonebayashi would be directing it is also false, as it comes from a profile of him on The Guardian, with no sources to back up the info.
• Non-Singing Voice: Enforced in the dubs, which keep in Tokiko Kato's performances of "Le Temps des Cerises" and "Toki ni wa Mukashi no Hanashi wo."
• Self-Adaptation: Just as was the case with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the film is based off of a 1989 manga Miyazaki made titled Hikōtei Jidai.
• Star-Making Role: This film marked Akemi Okamura's debut as a voice actor.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The film originally started out as a lighthearted and optimistic in-flight short film made for Japan Airlines based on Miyazaki's manga, Hikōtei Jidai. However, it would grow into a feature length film as production continued, with the connection to Hikōtei Jidai becoming looser in the process.
  • The film originally had a far more optimistic and lighthearted tone to it, like the manga that inspired it. However, the then-ongoing Yogoslav wars and Japan's involvement with the Gulf War disillusioned Miyazaki during production and would cause the film's tone to become more serious and grounded instead.
  • Around 2011, Miyazaki originally had plans for a sequel to the film titled Porco Rosso: The Last Sortie, which would've starred an aging Porco and be set during the Spanish Civil War in the late '30s. According to Miyazaki, however, the story was something he wrote during his off-time and was never put into production.

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