The Hello Kitty movie has landed Lindsey Beer of Transformers fame as its writer. Beginning in Japan during the 1970s, the Hello Kitty franchise originated as a brand of products featuring the famous white cat design by Yuko Shimizu. With her red bow and perpetually waving hand, the Hello Kitty character has become one of the most recognizable brand images in the world and has ventured into the realms of animation, manga, jewelry, video games and anything else that can fit a cat logo on it. More recently, Kitty's personality has been fleshed-out with a proper backstory, her own birthday and a fictional home just outside of London.
Given the enduring worldwide popularity of the Hello Kitty brand, it's perhaps surprising that Kitty White, to use the character's proper name, hasn't appeared in a major Hollywood feature film previously. Although the Hello Kitty franchise has branched out into film in its home country of Japan, the brand's first live action English language Hello Kitty movie was announced back in 2015 and earlier this year, New Line Cinema were confirmed to be taking on the project, with Beau Flynn's Flynn Picture Company producing.
As reported by THR, the Hello Kitty movie has now found a writer in the form of Lindsey Beer, who has previously worked on Transformers: The Last Knight and Chaos Walking, as well as the upcoming Masters of the Universe remake. Beer's own Known Universe banner will also take on an executive producing role on the Hello Kitty movie.
With Transformers, Masters of the Universe and now Hello Kitty, there's certainly a lot of brand and toy-based cinema on Beer's résumé. Unfortunately, Transformers: The Last Knight performed badly compared to previous entries in the franchise and reports recently emerged suggesting that Lionsgate deemed Chaos Walking unreleasable prior to extensive reshoots. While this may not fill Hello Kitty fans with much confidence, it's also worth noting that Beer wrote Sierra Burgess Is A Loser, which was a modest hit on Netflix.
It's difficult to gauge exactly where Hello Kitty will fall in terms of tone, and while it's safe to say that John Wick fans will be left disappointed, it remains to be seen as to whether Hello Kitty will be an outright kids movie or whether it'll attempt appealing to the legions of adult Hello Kitty fans across the world also. Brand or toy-based movies have a fairly poor track record both in terms of box office and critical reaction, but that hasn't deterred studios from making them. With Barbie, Clue and Monopoly-inspired movies all currently in development, it seems that, for better or worse, the trend is only just beginning.
Hello Kitty is currently without a release date. More news as it arrives.
Source: THR