So that’s why Sanrio has been charging $8.99 for 50 cents’ worth of plastic with a cartoon cat face on it for the past 40 years: It’s been saving up for a blockbuster Hello Kitty movie. Deadline reports that the Japanese company is planning to produce and finance a feature film based on the adventures of its unsettlingly expressionless cat/little girl hybrid, with a budget of between $160 million and $240 million. That number includes advertising, which makes the whole thing sound slightly less bananas. (For comparison, Jurassic World cost a reported $150 million; it’s unclear based on the source whether that number includes P&A, but we’re 99.9 percent sure it doesn’t.)
That’s…all we know about the purported movie. Will it be live action, CGI, or traditional animation? Will Hello Kitty have a mouth this time? Will anyone address how bizarre it is that Hello Kitty, herself a cat-girl, has a pet cat? Who are we to begrudge Hello and Charmmy Kitty their happiness, if that’s what they’re into?
Anyway, while there has never been a big-screen Hello Kitty movie, there have been several animated series starring Kitty and company, including Hello Kitty’s Paradise, Hello Kitty And Friends, and Hello Kitty’s Furry Tale Theater, the latter of which produced the pun-heavy Star Wars “parody” below.