In 2022, Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away will have its first adaptation for live action cinema.
This is the first film by Studio Ghibli to receive an adaptation for the stage. In 2013, Studio Ghibli and the Whole Hog Theater collaborated on a Live Princess Mononoke, which ran at London’s New Diorama Theater.
This time, Tony and Olivier Award winning director John Caird (Les Misérables, Nicholas Nickleby, Daddy Long Legs) will control and command the adaptation.
Known as Sen for Chihiro in Japan, Spirited Away was released in 2001 and became a huge hit in Japan.
“I feel so excited and privileged to be working on the first stage adaptation of Sen for Chihiro, ”Caird said in an official statement. “For many years I have considered Miyazaki Hayao one of the preeminent geniuses of world cinema and the greatest defender of the anime form.”
G / O Media can receive a commission
“I must have spent a thousand hours working on Sen for Chihiro and I hope to spend many thousands more ”, he said.
Both Mone Kamishiraishi and Kanna Hashimoto were doubly scaled as Chihiro lead. Mone is perhaps best known for her work in the anime Your name while Hashimoto starred in a series of films and TV.
“We, Hayao and I, liked John’s vision. He’s a person we can trust, ”said Toshio Suzuki of Studio Ghibli, who produced the original film. “I’m looking forward to seeing Chihiro grow up on the stage under his direction.”
“I could tell how much he loves this story because of his delighted face when I gave him a Faceless piggy bank,”Suzuki added.
The stage version of Spirited Away will debut at the Imperial Theater in Tokyo Japan in February 2022 and will run until March. Production will go on the road to Osaka (April), Fukuoka (May), Sapporo (June) and Nagoya (June and July).