NHK acquires The Worst Witch from ZDF
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Editor
| 05 July 2019

Japanese broadcaster NHK has licensed to ZDF Enterprises seasons 1 and 2 of children’s live action series The Worst Witch for its educational E-Tele Channel.

The series The Worst Witch is based on the popular children’s fictional works by Jill Murphy. The central character in The Worst Witch is ten-year-old Mildred Hubble, an ordinary girl who discovers she has the abilities of a witch. Despite her best intentions, she blunders from one disaster to the next because of her defining feature – clumsiness.

Mildred is by far the worst student at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches, but still she never gives up. Thanks to her friends and to her cat, Tabby, she never loses her sense of humour and usually manages to resolve even the most hopeless of situations.

This latest adaption of the British children’s classic was produced by CBBC Productions in collaboration with ZDF, ZDF Enterprises and Netflix as a fusion of real life and CGI. It already consists of 39 × 28′ episodes with the third season being in production. Filming took place largely in the UK, with key exterior scenes of Miss Cackle’s Witches’ Academy shot at Hohenzollern Castle in Germany.

NHK will produce the Japanese version of 1x58’ and 24x28’ finished episodes with a cast of well-known actors in Japan who are particularly popular with young audiences. P “As the number one distributor of children’s’ live action programmes, we are delighted to see this series enchant Japanese children in the very near future,” remarked Peter Lang, VP ZDFE.junior at ZDF Enterprises.

Prior to NHK, The Worst Witch had already been acquired amongst others by Discovery Kids (Latin America), HRT, GMA (Philippines) and exploited widely for Home Entertainment in Germany by Universum Film, Amazon, Google Play, Maxdome and iTunes.