LONDON — For decades, catching a Studio Ghibli film in a British cinema was a matter of timing and luck. Theatrical releases trickled through without a single distributor holding the full range, home video rights were split across labels, and the Netflix streaming arrangement that covers Ghibli titles outside North America and Japan never extended to what fans who wanted the films on the big screen could get. Beginning this summer, that changes.
GKids, the New York-based animation label that holds North American distribution rights to the full Ghibli catalog, announced Thursday it has acquired the equivalent rights for the United Kingdom and Ireland: all 23 films, across theatrical, home video, television, and digital platforms simultaneously. The first move is an IMAX release of Hayao Miyazaki’s 1989 film “Kiki’s Delivery Service” on August 21.
It is the first time a single specialist distributor has held the entire Ghibli catalog in those markets. The deal, negotiated between GKids president Eric Beckman and Vincent Maraval of Goodfellas, was reported Thursday by The Hollywood Reporter. Netflix retains its streaming rights under existing arrangements and is explicitly excluded from the new acquisition.
“We promise U.K. and Irish fans that we will take loving care of the Ghibli catalog, beginning with the Imax release of ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’ this summer,” GKids president David Jesteadt said in the announcement. The commitment carries weight: GKids has spent 15 years building its North American Ghibli business on the logic that premium theatrical treatment is what this audience demands, and the U.K. and Ireland rollout appears structured on the same premise.
The IMAX strategy goes beyond August. GKids confirmed two additional fall 2026 IMAX releases: “The Secret World of Arrietty,” Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s 2010 film about a family of miniature people living beneath the floorboards of a house, and “Whisper of the Heart,” Yoshifumi Kondo’s 1995 coming-of-age feature that has rarely had a significant theatrical window outside Japan. That GKids is leading with these titles signals a catalog-building approach rather than a greatest-hits program.
The catalog runs the full breadth of Ghibli’s output. “Spirited Away” became the highest-grossing film in Japanese history on its 2001 release and remains among the most widely beloved animated features in the world. “The Boy and the Heron,” Miyazaki’s 2023 return to feature directing after a decade-long retirement, won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. “Howl’s Moving Castle,” “Princess Mononoke,” “My Neighbor Totoro,” “Ponyo,” and “Castle in the Sky” form a catalog that has accumulated multigenerational audiences across four decades of filmmaking.
The distribution arrangement runs through Anime Limited, a Glasgow-based specialist distributor acquired by Toho Global, GKids’ parent company. The vertical integration matters practically: Anime Limited already handles a significant volume of anime catalog in the U.K. market, and the Ghibli relationship gives it a flagship property with built-in theatrical and home video demand unlike anything else it carries.
What the deal does not cover is itself significant. Netflix retains its streaming rights to the Ghibli library outside North America and Japan, meaning the library’s digital streaming availability in the U.K. and Ireland is unchanged. GKids’ acquisition covers the distribution channels Netflix does not: theatrical, physical home video, broadcast television, and digital transactional sales. As streaming platforms continue working through questions around legacy entertainment intellectual property, the Ghibli model of carefully partitioned licensing reflects an increasingly deliberate approach by the studio and Toho to how the catalog is managed globally.
The U.K. deal brings GKids’ Ghibli territory into alignment with its North American operation, where it has invested in premium exhibition: 4K restorations, IMAX runs, and high-quality physical releases over many years. Applied to the U.K. and Ireland, where London’s BFI IMAX and regional premium screens represent a substantial footprint for the format, the model gives titles like “Arrietty” and “Whisper of the Heart” theatrical opportunities they have never had in those markets.
What GKids has not said is how quickly the home video and digital transactional side of the acquisition will be structured. When U.K. and Irish audiences will be able to purchase films from the catalog outright, rather than only accessing them through Netflix’s streaming arrangement, remains unanswered. The theatrical program begins in August. What comes after that represents the deal’s full commercial scope, and on the specifics of that rollout, GKids has so far said nothing.
