Kiki's Delivery Service Returns to Theaters in IMAX
The IMAX release gives a decades-old hand-drawn film a theatrical run in a premium format that was never designed for it, signaling sustained commercial demand for Studio Ghibli's catalog beyond its initial audience.
Reporting from 1 sources: Cartoon Brew.
GKIDS is bringing a 4K remaster of Kiki's Delivery Service to IMAX theaters across North America on March 13. The 1989 Studio Ghibli film has never screened in the IMAX format before. The release is part of an ongoing partnership between GKIDS and IMAX to restore and show Ghibli titles in premium large-format theaters. The remastered presentation will be available in both the original Japanese with subtitles and the English dub. Tickets are on sale now in the U.S. and Canada. The collaboration was announced last year and has already produced several large-format Ghibli releases. The film's sense of space and motion is well suited to IMAX, according to the distributor, and the 4K remaster addresses visual imperfections from the original print.
The March 13 release date puts Kiki's Delivery Service in IMAX theaters roughly three and a half decades after its original 1989 Japanese debut. GKIDS, which handles North American distribution for Studio Ghibli, has been working with IMAX since last year on a series of large-format re-releases. Previous titles in the collaboration include other Ghibli films, though the exact lineup was not detailed in the announcement. The 4K remastering process was done to clean up the original film elements, and the distributor noted that the movie's aerial sequences and sense of motion fit the IMAX screen despite the format not existing when the film was made. Showtimes will vary by location, and tickets are already available for purchase. The English dub features the original voice cast from the 1998 Disney release.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.