Kiki and Jiji's story already has a Ghibli
movie that no one disputes, a Japanese live-action from 2014 and even a musical
in the West End. Now it adds something else: BBC Studios Kids &
Family, British production company Wheel in Motion and Kadokawa announced
a partnership to develop a live-action series based on Eiko Kadono's novels.
The project will adapt the first volume of the six-book saga into ten
half-hour episodes.
The writer chosen for the script is Irena
Brignull, known for her work on films such as The Boxtrolls and The
Little Prince. Kadokawa's involvement connects the project directly to the
original Japanese source material, while BBC Studios and Wheel in Motion bring
international production expertise to the global television market.
The decision to concentrate the first ten episodes
solely on the first book is significant: it means that the production will have
space to explore in depth Kiki's early days in the coastal city where she
settles, the beginning of her delivery service and the first stumbles and
learnings from her independence, all without the compression imposed by the
film format. It's basically the same material from Miyazaki's film, but with a
lot more time to breathe.
Kiki's Delivery Service (Majo no Takkyubin) is a series of novels by Eiko
Kadono that began publication in 1985 and concluded in 2009 with six
main volumes, plus a substory centered on the character of Osono published in
2014. Kadono received the Hans Christian Andersen Prize for Writing in
Children's Literature in 2019, one of the most important recognitions in
children's literature worldwide. The story follows Kiki, a young
witch who must leave her home on the night of the full moon to begin her
independence training, accompanied only by her black cat Jiji. He
settles in a coastal town and opens a delivery service using his broom,
learning lessons about self-confidence, friendship and growing. The best-known
adaptation is Hayao Miyazaki's 1989 Studio Ghibli film,
considered one of the studio's most beloved works.
