The New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Pictures Animation feature follows Hello Kitty and her friends on a ‘cinematic adventure designed to delight audiences of all ages;’ Ramsey Naito producing, will release globally on July 21, 2028.
New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Pictures Animation’s Hello Kitty feature has set David Derrick Jr. and John Aoshima as directors, with Ramsey Naito joining as a producer alongside Beau Flynn. Warner Bros. Pictures plans to release the film globally on July 21, 2028.
The feature marks Hello Kitty’s Hollywood theatrical debut, with a story that follows Hello Kitty and her friends on a “cinematic adventure designed to delight audiences of all ages.” Whatever that means. AWN first reported the feature film in development back in 2019.
Plot details remain under wraps, obviously, but according to Newline, the film will “deliver a globe-spanning, four-quadrant experience rooted in friendship, connection and fun, core values that have defined Hello Kitty for generations.”
The script is being penned by Jeff Chan, with previous drafts by Dana Fox, Katie Dippold, Adam Sztykiel, Jenny Jaffe, Lindsey Beer and Tamara Becher-Wilkinson, from a treatment by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon.
Both directors previously entered into overall deals with Warner Bros. Pictures Animation under Bill Damaschke. Shelby Thomas is overseeing for FlynnPictureCo.
Derrick made his directorial debut with Moana 2 after working on the original Moana, storyboarding “How Far I’ll Go” and “I Am Moana.” He also worked as a story artist on Disney Animation’s Raya and the Last Dragon, Encanto and Strange World, as well as Jon Favreau’s The Lion King remake for Walt Disney Pictures. Derrick, who attended the University of Utah and CalArts, began his career at DreamWorks Animation, and worked in the story department on Bee Movie, How to Train Your Dragon, Megamind and Rise of the Guardians.
Aoshima has more than 25 years of experience in television and feature animation and recently made his feature debut as co-director of the Annie- and VES-nominated Ultraman: Rising for Netflix. A CalArts graduate, he is also known for directing on DuckTales, American Dad! and Gravity Falls. His credits include LAIKA’s Oscar-nominated stop-motion feature Kubo and the Two Strings, as part of the story department, and Jorge Gutierrez’s Maya and the Three, as sequence director.
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
