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Ghibli/Disney Announces Animated LOST Miniseries
Lost: The Return, an animated television miniseries has begun production, announced Studio Ghibli, a Disney-affiliated Japanese animation house best known for the crossover feature films Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke.
"We thought between two and four years would be right for a reboot of the franchise, so we had already been working since early 2010, through The Walt Disney Company, to explore a collaboration with Studio Ghibli," said ABC Executive Vice President Barry Jossen. The Walt Disney Company is owner of both ABC Studios and Studio Ghibli. "Using a Japanese animation studio may sound surprising but it was appropriate for our notion of wanting a true and fresh reboot that wasn't merely a Lost universe predictably diluted into animated form. Studio Ghibli represents the ultimate in production and storytelling capabilities and frankly the creators at Bad Robot would accept no less," commented Jossen in an ABC Medianet press release.
Lost: The Return is helmed by the joint US-Japan team of executive producers Brian K. Vaughan and Toshio Suzuki, and is directed by Hiroyuki Morita. Vaughan is formerly an executive producer of Lost, and is also well-known by fans for his previous work with DC Comics including writing the Eisner Award-winning Y: The Last Man. Suzuki and Morita served as producer and director for Studio Ghibli's 1995 coming-of-age story Whisper of the Heart and its subsequent spin-off, The Cat Returns.
ABC Medianet has currently confirmed that the miniseries will be voiced in both the English and Japanese versions, with most of the original cast reprising their roles for the English version. However notably Matthew Fox and Harold Perrineau were not available for this production. The voices on the Japanese language version are also the dubbing actors who worked on the original Japanese dub of Lost, and are stars in their own right in for their extensive work in anime-- for example Kazuhiko Inoue, who dubs Jack in the Japanese version, is known for his work on Naruto.
Although Vaughan has been tight-lipped about story specifics, the press release states that the storyline will focus on the "exploring new and previously untold details of the personal stories of the characters, as they are forced to confront the ambiguity of their good and dark impulses."
Production is scheduled to wrap in third quarter 2012 for a January-February 2013 broadcast on ABC. The miniseries has been picked up for an installment of eight episodes, with the possibility of a second installment in 2014. We will keep you up to date as we hear more about this exciting project!
