Japan’s TBS, Fuji TV & Major Studios Make Ambitious Play For U.S. And International Markets

Move over South Korea, there’s a new player in the international arena. Japan’s famously risk-averse broadcasters and studios have woken up to the world outside Japan and are making a bold move on the the U.S. and other international markets. 

In part inspired by the global success of Korean content, but also aware that their huge domestic market is shrinking as Japan’s population declines, major players such as Toho, Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) and Fuji Television realize they need to find a source of revenue elsewhere in order to grow. And with deep libraries of anime, manga, movies, formats and games, they’ve also realized that they’re sitting on huge reservoirs of valuable IP. 

Toho was among the first Japanese studios to make international moves, under forward-thinking chairman and CEO Hiro Matsuoka, taking back some rights to its Godzilla franchise and getting involved in merchandising in the U.S., rather than licensing away all the IP. After self-distributing its Japanese-language Godzilla Minus One in the U.S., the ambitious studio has gained an even firmer footing in the North America market by acquiring leading anime distributor Gkids. 

Now the other studios and broadcast networks in Japan are taking note. At the TIFFCOM contents market, which wrapped in Tokyo today, TBS Holdings and Fuji TV both gave presentations on their international expansion plans, which include establishing new U.S. offices and selling and packaging their extensive libraries of IP.  

“All these companies are now expending considerable resources on selling their formats and programming so they can increase revenue from outside Japan,” says former Disney Japan executive Harry Tanaka, who has co-founded Studio Muso to help U.S. studios navigate the complex world of Japanese IP. “For the longest time, they neglected that business but now they’re all turning in that direction.”

Tanaka explains that format sales is the first step, but many of these companies are also talking about co-producing and co-investing with international partners to produce English-language content based on their properties, rather than passively licensing to third parties. 

During TIFFCOM, TBS Holdings