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Variety Interviews Tokyopop CEO, Covers Film Projects
posted on by Mikhail Koulikov
Two articles from the international film industry newspaper Variety look at the past, present, and future of American manga publisher Tokyopop. The first of these articles by journalist Thomas McLean is an interview with Stuart Levy, Tokyopop's founder and chief executive officer. Levy talks about the history of the company and describes the difficulties Tokyopop faced when it was first trying to introduce unflipped book-length manga into the American retail market. He then reaffirms that Tokyopop's ultimate goal is to become a "worldwide brand" that produces entertainment content in its own right, rather than just licensing existing titles from other companies.
The second article, which is also written by McLean, examines several details of Tokyopop's move beyond licensing and translation of manga. Although several Hollywood movie studios are potentially interested in developing live-action adaptations of some of Tokyopop's licensed and original manga, successfully translating these works to film remains a major challenge. At least three films based on Tokyopop titles are currently in various stages of development in studios, but the company is also looking to independently produce shorts based on several of their properties such as I Luv Halloween, Van Von Hunter and Princess Ai.
