Exciting news for Studio Ghibli fans: the 98% rated masterpiece Kiki’s Delivery Service is getting a live-action remake almost 40 years after the original’s release. According to Variety, BBC Studios Kids & Family is teaming up with UK production company Wheel in Motion and Japan’s Kadokawa Corporation for a new live-action television series based on Eiko Kadono’s original novel. It will take the form of 10 30-minute episodes, based on the first volume of Kadono’s series, and will be released to mark the 40th anniversary of the book’s release.
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There’s no news yet on when fans can expect to see the new adaptation, which can obviously draw on Kadono’s other 5 books in the series to tell a deeper story than the Studio Ghibli anime. Kadono has also offered her stamp of approval alongside the announcement: “Kiki is about to set off on another adventure into a new world. I’m confident this will be a great show. I can’t wait to see the series come to life.”
Kiki’s Delivery Service Can Delight a Whole New Generation of Fans
Strictly speaking, this isn’t the first time Kiki’s Delivery Service has been remade in live-action, as a 2014 movie directed by Takashi Shimizu brought the book to the screen. It didn’t fare well with negative critical reactions, and has mostly passed out of wide memory. This will be a fairly rare opportunity to see a Studio Ghibli story adapted in live action, which is only really possible because the series will adapt the same source material, rather than being a straight remake of the Ghibli version.
The new series has great credentials already with Irena Brignull writing. She previously wrote Skellig, The Boxtrolls, and The Little Prince, so has a strong record. She’s on the record in the announcement to share her excitement: “Kiki is one of fiction’s great girl characters and I’m thrilled to be part of bringing her to life in this new adaptation. Embodying the magic that exists in re-invention and human connection, she shows us what’s possible when you venture boldly and big-heartedly into the world to find a sense of purpose.”
While Hayao Miyazaki’s animated version will forever be the go-to version for millions of fans, there have also been at least three musical stage adaptations since 1993, and the book’s popularity has led to other attempts to bring it to live-action. Notably, just over 20 years ago, Walt Disney Pictures hired Jeff Stockwell to write the script and had a production team in place, but the trail has long-since run cold. Whether that would have been a fitting creative setup for a remake may be somewhat divisive too, given Disney broke the terms of its distribution contract with Ghibli and altered some of the studio’s movies without permission. That included major changes to Kiki’s Delivery Service, to which they added music, new sound effects and dialogue that weren’t in the original.
The decision to make a British production may raise some eyebrows, but as one Redditor says “a witch running a delivery service out of a European seaside town with her cat is already the most BBC show ever made.” There’s also a certain British spirit to other Ghibli stories like Howl’s Moving Castle and, of course, Arrietty, and the Ghibli adaptation channelled European aesthetics by basing Koriko on historic Swedish towns Visby and Gamla Stan. If they go with a British setting, they’ll also avoid the direct comparisons to the animated movie that could set the new adaptation up with an insurmountable challenge before it even begins.
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