Japanese distributor and producer Gaga Corporation is boosting its investment in lucrative anime features and eyeing a move into video games, following its majority stake acquisition by entertainment firm Genda.
Gaga president and CEO Tom Yoda is at the Cannes market with an “aggressive” growth strategy and a diverse slate that includes an upcoming martial arts drama from acclaimed filmmaker Takashi Miike and two Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction anime films, based on the popular manga by Inio Asano.
Yoda notes that the Japanese box office has been dominated by anime titles in recent years and such success would help Genda’s ambitious goal of becoming “the world’s #1 entertainment company” by 2040. The veteran executive added that Gaga’s “cultured and diverse” content will play a crucial part in achieving that goal.
Satomi Odake, managing director at Gaga, said: “By joining the Genda Group, we are able to look at the entertainment industry from a larger perspective.”
“In addition, we’re also looking into video games, merchandising, and more, aiming to be an all-round entertainment content provider,” added Yoda.
In terms of distributing international content, Yoda notes that while non-Japanese films accounted for just 33% of box office takings in 2023, they made up 45% of the total number of films released in Japanese cinemas. That means, in Yoda’s estimation, that a larger number of small-to-medium budget award winners, such as the Gaga-distributed Oscar winner Anatomy Of A Fall, will be key going forward.
In cultivating new and existing relationships with overseas partners, Gaga will continue to bank on its reputation for handling films that are “commercially viable and of high quality,” said Odake, citing Gaga’s domestic distribution of eight Academy Award best picture winners as well as the production of Japanese genre films such as #Manhole and Confession.
Odake added that because Gaga is a distributor as well as a producer, its international sales team, headed by Haruko Watanabe, shares “the same perspective” as the international distributors to which it sells films.
One challenge for Gaga and Japanese distributors at large is the weak yen, which makes it difficult to purchase the rights to the kind of high-quality films for which Gaga is known, said Yoda, describing their current stance to licensing as “cautiously aggressive.” On the other hand, because Gaga is also an exporter, the weak yen is also a “huge advantage”.
Yoda added: “We have films where, in the planning stages, we assumed an exchange rate of 110 yen to the dollar [the current rate is 155), so we’ve gotten very lucky in that sense.”
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