{"id":455304,"date":"2026-05-18T18:37:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T18:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/455304\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T18:37:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T18:37:12","slug":"david-derrick-jr-john-aoshima-to-direct-hello-kitty-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/455304\/","title":{"rendered":"David Derrick Jr., John Aoshima to Direct Hello Kitty Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Carell Augustus\/Netflix, Gilbert Flores\/Variety via Getty Images\n <\/p>\n

Amid a stressful election \u2014 the 2026 Sanrio Character Rankings<\/a>, that is \u2014 we have some good news in the world of Hello Kitty and friends. David Derrick Jr. and John Aoshima (both over five apples tall) have signed on as the directors for the upcoming Hello Kitty animated movie<\/a> produced by Warner Bros. Both have overall deals with Warner Bros. Pictures Animation under Bill Damaschke; Derrick Jr. previously co-directed Moana 2, and Aoshima co-directed Ultraman: Rising. Ramsey Naito is also joining the creative team as a producer. Beau Flynn of FlynnPictureCo. is producing as well, with Shelby Thomas overseeing. We\u2019re still two years out from seeing Kitty on the big screen \u2014 the movie debuts on July 21, 2028 \u2014 but it at least gives movie theaters enough time to prepare for a new wave of cinema cuteness.<\/p>\n

But what shenanigans will Kitty and friends get into for their first movie in America? If it\u2019s anything like Hello Kitty Island Adventure, they\u2019ll be jumping out of a plane in pursuit of friendship and forgiveness. The current script for the movie is being written by Jeff Chan, who wrote the rom-com\u00a0Plus One; previous drafts were written by Dana Fox, Katie Dippold, Adam Sztykiel, Jenny Jaffe, Lindsey Beer, and Tamara Becher-Wilkinson. The original movie treatment came from Reno 911! and Night at the Museum writers Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon. If they need pitches, they should ask Badtz-Maru. He\u2019s a movie guy, don\u2019t you know?<\/p>\n

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Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Carell Augustus\/Netflix, Gilbert Flores\/Variety via Getty Images Amid a stressful election \u2014 the 2026 Sanrio…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,67523,197568,61,60,270,43,197558,197569],"class_list":["post-455304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-hello-kitty","tag-hello-kitty-movie","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-news","tag-sanrio","tag-sanrio-cinema"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}