What if: Miramax not taking over Pokémon movie distribution

Back when the fourth Pokémon movie was set to hit the US, it was announced that a new distributor, Miramax, would be taking over distribution for this and the next few Pokémon movies. What's more with that change is that Miramax put Pokémon 4Ever and its follow-up, Pokémon Heroes on very limited US theatrical release, meaning the vast majority of Pokémon fans at that time had to travel to a major city (be it New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, or any other major metropolitan area in the United States) just to see either of these films in theaters, or else forget about it and wait for them to be released to home video.
Another major problem with the limited release model of Miramax was that both of the aforementioned films flopped badly at the box office.

When you first found out that Miramax was taking over distribution of the fourth and fifth Pokémon movies from Warner Bros, how did you react? Was putting them on limited theatrical release (as opposed to "in theaters everywhere" for the first three movies) a good idea? What if Miramax never took over for the fourth and fifth movies, and Warner Bros. continued with these two or another major studio took over theatrical rights instead?
Of course, feel free to bring up any other relevant points to this topic as well.

When I saw the info for Pokémon 4Ever's US theatrical release online, I was shocked to see the Miramax logo in the advertising and other promotional material, including on Pokemon.com. I was also pretty miffed that no theaters in my immediate area were going to be showing this film, with the closest theater showing 4Ever being in the Detroit metro area. (Additionally, as for Heroes, I don't think any theaters in Michigan ran that film at all.)

I knew that limited theatrical release wasn't going to do these films much good, although in retrospect, it may have been because the Pokémon craze had died down considerably following 9-11, although I do remember reading somewhere many years ago that 4Ever was taken over by Miramax and put on limited release due to Spell of the Unown failing at the US box office with its wide theatrical release by Warner Bros. (as if a limited release of its follow-ups by a new distributor was going to do any better).

According to a 2004 blog post by famed animation historian Jerry Beck, Miramax has never done well with animated features, and that Pokémon 4Ever and Heroes were actually acquired by Disney themselves, but handed off to Miramax because the former was afraid of releasing them under the Walt Disney Pictures or Touchstone banners.

Finally, I have to wonder if that blueish tint in Heroes wasn't actually a decision on the part of Miramax, but a lab color timing error by Cathy Rait (color timer at DeLuxe Toronto, who worked on the US dub releases of the first few Pokémon movies.)

The last Pokemon movie I actually watched was the third one, and that was on video.

Interesting topic.

To be honest, I didn't notice a difference at the time because I was at the age where I didn't understand or care about the implications of them.

I do think that regardless of the studio distributing, the theatrical rights would have eventually lapsed due to the stiff competition and differences in the film market. Theatrical 2D animation was on the decline and post-Pokemania, the market for the anime films was fairly niche. Fuck, Spirited Away was distributed under the proper Disney label with John Lasseter's heavy involvement and still the Ghibli films had limited releases with modest box office.

Ultimately, Miramax's mishandling had a minimal effect in the course of distribution of the films. In the long run, all it really meant is that lots of people missed out on seeing the 4th and 5th films when they were originally released. (I myself was fortunate enough to see the 4th in theaters, and I never saw the 5th until I happened upon a pirated copy on the internet in like 2009. lol)