Trivia / From Up on Poppy Hill

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• Breakthrough Hit: This is Goro Miyazaki's first successful movie that gives Ghibli fans some hope that he can follow up his father's footsteps.
• Died During Production: Seiichiro Ujiie, who served as a member of the film's production committee, died four months before the film's release due to multiple organ failure.
• Hostility on the Set: During the film's production, Hayao and Goro Miyazaki's relationship was strained to the point where Ghibli released a documentary called Poppy Hill - 300 Days of War between Father and Son. That said, despite the tension, both Hayao and Goro kept their relationship mostly professional and ultimately worked together to fix the movie.
• Non-Singing Voice: In the first Latin American Spanish dub, while Jesús Barrero voices Shiro Mizunuma, the character's singing voice is provided by Luis Leonardo Suárez.
• Posthumous Credit: Seiichiro Ujiie is given a credit in this film, having been involved in its production until his March 2011 death.
• Promoted Fanboy: The film's English ADR director Gary Rydstrom is a Studio Ghibli fan himself.
• Real-Life Relative: In the English dub, Chairman Tokumaru is voiced by Beau Bridges, while his daughter Emily voices Tokumaru's assistant.
• Real Song Theme Tune: Aoi Teshima's rendition of Ryoko Moriyama's 1976 song "Summer of Farewells" is used as the ending theme.
• Studio Hop: Disney, which originally distributed Studio Ghibli's films in North America, neglected to pick up this movie and given its subject matter, they probably wouldn't have wanted it anyway. GKIDS, an independent animation distribution company that had previously received theatrical rights to most of the Ghibli films, picked up Poppy Hill, with Studio Ghibli preparing a dub for it at Skywalker Sound. The movie was released in theaters on March 15, 2013, followed by a DVD and Blu-Ray release that took place nearly six months later.
  • The English dub of the film is the very last project Kathleen Kennedy was involved in prior to joining a Disney-owned Lucasfilm. That said, the English dub was recorded at Lucasfilm subsidiary Skywalker Sound.
• Troubled Production: The movie's production was halfway done when on March 11, 2011, an earthquake struck and the resulting tsunami devastated the Pacific coast of Tôhoku which ruined the movie as it lies on a 50% completion. Though when the animators decided to stop production, Hayao Miyazaki scolded them in order to continue the film's production since thousands are waiting for the movie to help them cope with the disaster.
• What Could Have Been: In the early storyboards, Hayao Miyazaki explains that the characters were too dull and boring and constantly asked the staffs to persuade his son to change it.

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