‘20th Century Boys’ Flick Makes Big Bucks for NTV
So, here we are in the U.S. waiting to get our hands on Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys manga– which VIZ won’t release until after Urasawa’s Monster is finished –and meanwhile, NTV is off selling the movie trilogy to other countries. Megabox bought the Korean rights and plans on it being the biggest Japanese series ever to hit Korea; buyers have also acquired it for Hong Kong and Taiwan (bought by Golden Harvest), Thailand (M Pictures), and Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei (Encore Films).
Which, of course, begs the question: who’s gonna score it in the US? VIZ, with the manga license plus their movie picture distro, seems like the obvious choice…but they haven’t yet put on a theatrical release of more than a few days. So maybe NTV is going to look for a more mainstream distro? Then again, maybe not; they seem content with VIZ doing the Death Note movies, which were also major sellers for them in Asia.
Tags: 20th century boys, death-note, monster, Naoki Urasawa, viz-media
May 14th, 2008 at 8:26 am
The US is not Asia. I highly doubt that a live-action Japanese film would ever see a wide release in America. In general, foreign films are always given limited theatrical runs. If it’s not Hollywood, it’s not going to fly. On top of that, manga adaptations don’t even appeal to that foreign film audiance.
Anime companies are going to be the only venue for this film, and VIZ has not established the series enough over here for them to pick it up.
You might have FUNimation or Bandai jump in for the movie rights, but even in that situation, you’ll only see very limited theatrical release or straight-to-DVD. But my money’s on this movie never making it over here.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:02 am
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptSo, here we are in the US waiting to get our hands on Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys manga– which VIZ won’t release until after Urasawa’s Monster is finished –and meanwhile, NTV is off selling the movie trilogy to other countries. … Read the rest of this great post here [...]
May 14th, 2008 at 9:10 am
I highly doubt that a live-action Japanese film would ever see a wide release in America.
Um, how about Kurosawa’s Ran, which was released in theaters the US six months after its ‘85 JP release and even did moderately well?
You may end up being right, but I’m not going to jump on the YARR NO CHANCE IN HELL bandwagon all that fast. ;) For those who know of it, 20th Century Boys is an extremely well-regarded series.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Sure, throw some Kurosawa at me! He’s only the biggest iconic image of Japanese cinema to have ever be imported over.
Well… second only to Godzilla, of course. ;-)
May 14th, 2008 at 10:01 am
@Scott: Oh yeah, that too. See? Some Japanese movies do okay in the US! ♥
August 5th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
[...] really hoping to catch it in Japan, but as reported by Gia, Singapore is one of the many countries who bought the movie rights. Still, if it runs for more [...]