In Hello Kitty’s 52-year-old history, global movie star will be a new adventure

She’s five apples tall and she’s coming to a big screen near you.

She also has a red bow, a yellow button nose but no mouth because she’s supposed to speak from the heart rather than a specific language, but someone is going to have make a decision and narrow it down.

The upcoming Hello Kitty movie had a significant update on Tuesday with the revelation that two filmmakers have been tapped to direct the film. David Derrick Jr (Moana 2) and John Aoshima (Kubo and the Two Strings) will helm the movie, now slated for a mid-2028 release.

This project has been in development for over a decade, with Hello Kitty owner Sanrio initially announcing its existence in 2015. It’s been through several release dates and even another set of directors, but this is the firmest sign yet that it’s actually happening.

It has also been confirmed that the animated film is in the English language, so, yes, Hello Kitty will have to speak from something akin to a mouth.

There are scant details as to how the filmmakers plan to adapt a cartoon character with no real backstory but the success of the Barbie movie has emboldened every toy company with recognisable brands.

The filmmakers may build from Hello Kitty’s official character history, as brief as that is – her name is Kitty White, she’s actually a young girl and not a cat, and she hails from the suburbs of England.

She likes to travel, bake cookies and make new friends. She also has a boyfriend named Dear Daniel, whose full name is Daniel Star, and a twin sister named Mimmy.

Since the character’s inception in 1974, Hello Kitty has become a multi-billion-dollar empire – the BBC put that figure at $US80 billion during the character’s 50th anniversary in 2024.

From plushies to pencil cases, clothes and accessories, Hello Kitty is a merchandising powerhouse, and has been emblazoned on everything. Crocs, Casio watches, Polaroid cameras, on the Japanese shinkansen train, on airplanes, and in collaborations with Converse, Adidas, Balenciaga, Gucci and even Fender guitars.

Hello Kitty was created to sell consumer goods and her first appearance was on a clear vinyl coin purse.

Her origin story lies with sandals, which at the time was Sanrio’s bestseller, and it was noticed that the shoes printed with a strawberry pattern were outdoing plain ones. Sanrio tasked animators to come up with something adorable befitting the Japanese concept of “kawaii”, roughly translated as cute.

Hello Kitty was created by Yuko Shimizu, a 20-something designer and art school graduate who was inspired by both Through the Looking Glass and a white kitten she had been gifted for her birthday by her father when she was a young child.

Shimizu designed two versions, one with a front profile and one with a side profile. Her younger assistant said the side profile was cuter, so that was chosen for the coin purse.

Little has changed since Hello Kitty’s first appearance, the round face, the red bow and blue overalls. It was introduced with a slate of other characters but Hello Kitty easily outperformed her rivals.

Shimizu left Sanrio soon afterwards and since 1980 until February this year, the same woman, Yuko Yamaguchi, has been the lead designer of Hello Kitty.

Hello Kitty’s popularity in Japan coincided with a period of economic growth, so the character quickly spread among the country’s children. A Sanrio theme park opened in 1990.

Soon, it was ubiquitous, and as those kids grew up, Sanrio expanded its marketing to appeal to not just new generations but to those now-adults, as a nostalgic brand that represented innocence and uncomplicated happiness.

By the 1990s, Hello Kitty had become a global icon and counted among its fans Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Mariah Carey. It came to represent a side of Japanese pop culture that was cute, alongside Pokemon, Harajuku girls and Studio Ghibli movies.

In early 2000, Hello Kitty and McDonald’s teamed up for a promotion around Asia, and it went completely bonkers in Singapore. Reports at the time recounted queues so long that some of them formed from the night before a release of a new set of Hello Kitty and Dear Daniel toy figures dressed in different cultural wedding costumes.

The lines disrupted traffic and other local businesses, the customers threw away the McDonald’s (they only wanted the toys), and at one outlet, a glass door that had been leaned against by the enthusiastic crowd shattered and sent three people to hospital.

The frenzy was real.

The Hello Kitty movie won’t be the first time the character will have appeared on screen. As early as 1987, there had been a Hello Kitty animated TV series in Japan, called Hello Kitty’s Furry Tale Theatre.

The character returned in 1989 with Hello Kitty and Friends, which ran until 2000, and had been distributed around the world including in the US, Germany, Mexico and Italy. More versions followed throughout the years, and even now, there is an ongoing animated series on the Hello Kitty’s official YouTube channel.

But what she’s never had among the music albums, video games, comics is a global cinema film.

That will change in 2028.