A Live Action KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE Is Headed Our Way

Kiki's Delivery Service stands as one of Hayao Miyazaki's cutest films. Not quite as iconic as My Neighbor Totoro, but more classic feeling then Ponyo, the film definitely has its fans and benefits here in America from a superb English dub. (I know this is awful, but I love many of John Lasseter's dubs more than the originals. I'm particularly fond of Billy Crystal's Calcifer from Howl's Moving Castle. But more to the point, I would be kind of sad to miss out on Phil Hartman's Jiji were I to watch Kiki with subtitles.)

Kiki was based on a novel by Kadono Eiko, which supplied the basic story not only for Miyazaki's film but also a manga series and a stage musical, so the idea that they're now doing a live action version is no big slap in the face of artistic decency or anything like that.

People have been talking about doing this for a while now anyway. But today things seem to have gotten very official. Twitch reports the upcoming movie will be helmed by Shimizu Takashi, director of The Grudge and Ju-On, and will star sixteen year old figure skater Koshiba Fuka as Kiki. I believe she looks like this:

For those who don't know, Kiki's Delivery Service is about a young friendly witch named Kiki. She has a delivery service.

This proposed live action version of the story will supposedly adapt the first two novels of Eiko's series rather than the measly one novel Miyazaki covered. So even if you've seen Kiki's Delivery Service a million times, this new one should give you plenty of new stuff to anticipate.