Disney Expands Deal With Kodansha, Set to Reveal New APAC Titles

The Walt Disney Firm Asia Pacific has revealed an growth of its 70-year collaboration with publishing home Kodansha to incorporate Japanese anime. Disney and Kodansha have labored collectively within the publishing area, and can now enterprise into the world of anime.

The expanded collaboration will embrace licensing unique SVOD anime titles primarily based on manga produced by Kodansha. These will start with “Tokyo Revengers: Christmas Showdown Arc” that may launch completely on Disney+ and Disney+ Hotstar in Jan. 2023.

Yoshinobu Noma, Kodansha consultant director and president, stated: “The particular relationship between Kodansha and Disney stretches again over 70 years, and has seen us carry to life many Disney licensed publications. With as we speak’s announcement, we’re thrilled to have the ability to additional diversify and elevate the connection between our two firms and share much more of our beloved anime titles with the world on Disney+ and its streaming platforms.”

Carol Choi, govt VP of authentic content material technique, The Walt Disney Firm APAC, added: “We’re thrilled to deepen our strategic collaboration with our lengthy standing accomplice Kodansha on such an thrilling style. Japanese anime fills the white area in our content material improvement plans and we consider this expanded collaboration shall be a recreation changer in Disney’s future animation technique in Japan. We sit up for bringing the anime titles and prized IP by Kodansha to the world stage.”

In the meantime, at an occasion at Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands conference middle on Wednesday, Disney is revealing a number of titles, with some 50 reveals from its 2023 theatrical and streaming content material slate being offered to over 400 worldwide press and companions. The brand new initiatives unveiled are a part of Disney’s ambition to greenlight over 50 APAC originals by 2023.

Attendees embrace Japanese director Miike Takashi, Korean stars Jung Haein, Ko Kyungpyo and Kim Hyejun from the crime fantasy thriller “Join”; Lee Donghwi, Heo Sungtae and acclaimed director Kang Yunsung from “Huge Guess”; Yuya Yagira, Riho Yoshioka and director Katayama Shinzo from Japanese drama collection “Gannibal”; and Chelsea Islan from the upcoming Indonesian superhero collection “Tira.” Pixar’s director-animator-storyboard artist and voice actor Peter Sohn, director of characteristic movie, “Elemental,” will even be on the occasion.

“Final October, at our first APAC Content material Showcase, we made our first step into native content material manufacturing with an bold, long-term plan to uncover the world’s greatest tales from this area, and to showcase artistic excellence that may shine on the world stage,” stated Luke Kang, president, The Walt Disney Firm Asia Pacific in his opening remarks. “This yr, it was necessary for us to showcase the breadth of our world branded content material from our award-winning studios and iconic franchises, in addition to our APAC content material slate for 2023.”

During the last yr, over 45 new APAC titles have debuted on Disney’s streaming service. The entire hours of locally-produced Asian content material streamed on Disney+ is eight instances greater than it was a yr in the past, the corporate stated.

“We’re focusing our content material improvement on what we check with as our content material white area,” Kang stated. “Investing in areas that require extra native specificity – both on account of excessive recognition in choose markets, like Japanese Anime, Ok-Dramas or Indonesia rom-coms and horror, or the necessity for native storytelling with expertise which can be acquainted to our native audiences. We need to serve our viewers in each market with globally branded content material like Disney, Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar, in addition to domestically produced tales that resonate with them – whereas additionally taking the perfect of these tales world.”

Disney’s streaming providers now attain over 235 million subscribers throughout 154 markets worldwide.