Klonoa (lost production material of cancelled film adaptation of Namco video game series; 2016-2019)

Hitoshi Ariga's artwork of Klonoa in his design for the cancelled Klonoa Henshin film adaptation.

Status: Lost

Klonoa is a video game series of platformers developed and published by Bandai Namco, with it’s first release being the 1997 Playstation title Klonoa: Door to Phantomile. While the franchise has laid dormant since 2008’s Klonoa (a remake of Door to Phantomile) on the Nintendo Wii, the series nonetheless has a passionate cult following. In an attempt to renew interest, an animated adaptation of Klonoa was in development, before being cancelled years after it’s initial reveal.

History

In October 2016, an animated film of Klonoa was revealed to be in development by Henshin at TIFFCOM, the Tokyo Film Festival's rights market. Henshin's founder, Rob Pereyda signed on as the producer and Hitoshi Ariga to write the script, design the characters, and co-produce the adaptation. The storyline was planned to be set in the same timeline as the games, though would have a narrative original to the movie. In January 2017, now former Gamexplain member and creator of Good Vibes Gaming, Ash Paulsen, was brought on for a associate producer role. In November 2018, Hideo Yoshizawa (Yoshizawa previously worked on the Klonoa games as a producer, and had also joined the movie's production) stated despite no recent news, it was still going to release on Twitter in a replay to a fan, though Ariga shared he couldn't say a word about it in the same thread.

On January 4th, 2019, Ariga confirmed on Twitter the proposed animated adaptation was sheleved due to the trouble production it was having, though he expressed hope on another Klonoa project materializing in the future. However, the now deleted Klonoa Anime Project Twitter account (the official page for the movie) posted a Tweet saying the film was no longer "with them" on December 31st, 2018, suggesting the film's end might've been in motion earlier then when Ariga posted.

Shortly afterwords in the same month, Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada had revealed insights about the film on Twitter via a tweet longer. Not only did Bandai Namco have no involvement aside from a deadline they put on Henshin, but the film's own death was from Henshin themselves.

Availability

During the film's short lifecycle, concept art from Ariga was drawn and can be found on Twitter. Notably in all of them, Klonoa has an attire that was meant exclusively for the film and wasn't based on any of his outfits from the orignal source material. While the Klonoa series could possibly return someday, it's unlikely this adaptation will ever materialize.

Gallery

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  Concept art released to promote the film's TIFFCOM annoucment in 2016.

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  Concept art shared on Ariga's Twitter in 2018.

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  Concept art sketched as a sneek peak by Ariga in 2017 in honor of Klonoa's 20th anniversary.

External Links

• Twitter thread on the film's entire 2016-2019 development. Retrieved 7 Feb '21