The Japanese studio that produced the classic animated film Kiki’s Delivery Service has another witchy adaptation in the works.
Studio Ghibli will soon release an animated movie version of English author Diana Wynne Jones’ 2012 kids’ book, Earwig and the Witch, according to Entertainment Weekly.
Japanese television broadcaster NHK announced today that it would air the upcoming film, titled Aya and the Witch, this coming winter, noted EW. The movie, which will feature only computer-generated animation, will be directed by Gorō Miyazaki, the son of Studio Ghibli’s co-founder, filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. The elder Miyazaki wrote and directed the studio’s best-known works, including My Neighbor Totoro (1988); Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), which was based on a 1985 children’s fantasy novel by Eiko Kadono; Princess Mononoke (1997); and Spirited Away (2001), which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Earwig and the Witch, illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky and published shortly after Jones’ death, tells the story of Erica “Earwig” Wigg, an orphan who loves living at St. Morwald’s Home for Children, where she basically has the run of the place. But one day, she’s adopted by witch Bella Yaga and the Madrake, a strange and very tall fellow who “trucks with demons,” according to Kirkus’ review. They effectively make Earwig their servant, so the girl decides to take matters into her own hands and learn magic. Kirkus’ review called the book “utterly charming,” with “just the right level of grotesquerie and scariness.”
In 2004, Hayao Miyazaki wrote and directed a rather loose animated-film adaptation of Jones’ 1986 novel, Howl’s Moving Castle, which won a Nebula Award for Best Script and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Gorō Miyazaki is no stranger to book adaptations, either; he co-wrote and directed the 2006 animated film Tales from Earthsea, which drew on the first four books in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle fantasy series.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
