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INTEREST: Yaoyorozu Studio's Producer Proposes Partnership System to Replace Anime Production Commit

Very interesting, as I always thought that studios (the main "animation production" ones credited) held some kind of right or equal rights over the shows they made. It's a little odd to hear, given they are often the "face" of the production effort (which also sounds somewhat like the reverse of music, where the singer/performing artist is the "face" of the song, but the songwriter is the one with the main rights and royalties).

Very interesting, as I always thought that studios (the main "animation production" ones credited) held some kind of right or equal rights over the shows they made. It's a little odd to hear, given they are often the "face" of the production effort (which also sounds somewhat like the reverse of music, where the singer/performing artist is the "face" of the song, but the songwriter is the one with the main rights and royalties).

The report stated that anime production companies (i.e. anime studios) only earned an estimated 230.1 billion yen (about US$2.17 billion), which was about one tenth of the industry's total market value.

To confront these problems, Fukuhara suggested a new "partnership system." In this scenario, anime studios are in leadership positions, and foreign distribution companies such as Amazon and Netflix become their partners. The distribution companies would pay distribution fees in proportion to the entire cost of production. Ultimately, the main purpose of distribution license fees is to allow copyrights for a work to remain with anime studios in this system. Studios could then individually sell rights to licensees and expand into businesses for secondary usage.

I'll be honest, I'm torn. I can understand the reason for Anime Studios wanting part ownership as they making the visual content of a series and even contributing to it's creation. And it potentially could help put money back in the studio and increasing wages.

However, if you look it from the creator's perspective, it's like these studios wanting a piece of your property. That doesn't sit well for me. Especially if a creator funds the series themselves.

Another major detractor is if you share a property how would it be split should occur? Just look at the fiasco with Star Trek when it was split between CBS and Paramount. Or a better example with anime fans, the situation with the Macross series, where property was divided so badly we still are trying to make sense of it. (Not to mention the Harmony Gold situation).

So if something should happen to the partnership, then how would a series be handled? So to prevent a Macross redux, the legal work will be insane with contracts and agreements. Potentially only benefiting large corporations and hurting small or independent studios.

That's my 2 cents.

So................
Correct me if I am wrong, but did he just say that the distribution companies should front majority if not all of the production cost just to get the distribution rights; i.e. the licensing cost to be increased since the other partners in the usual production committee is going to be left out in this model? And then after that, the anime studios hold the main copyrights and can sell/license secondary rights to the show itself? i.e. is he asking the distribution companies to take greater risk with little to no returns?

FD2Raptor wrote:

So................ Correct me if I am wrong, but did he just say that the distribution companies should front majority if not all of the production cost just to get the distribution rights; i.e. the licensing cost to be increased since the other partners in the usual production committee is going to be left out in this model? And then after that, the anime studios hold the main copyrights and can sell/license secondary rights to the show itself? i.e. is he asking the distribution companies to take greater risk with little to no returns?

Netflix is already paying as much as it costs to produce a series without having any direct ownership rights. They make plenty of profit from subscriptions and viewership, so not owning the content is not really much of a downside from them, as long as they have exclusive streaming rights, they are set. There is no greater risk. On the other hand, now a small portion of the viewership profits will be royalties that do go back to the Animation Studio, and any merchandise licensing, additional adaptations, etc, would stay with them as well. The biggest downside would have to do with what kind of contract Netflix is signing for this stuff. If they don't ever expire, like Netflix probably wants, things might become problematic in a few decades if the landscape has changed significantly. And I'm sure it will.

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Netflix is already paying as much as it costs to produce a series without having any direct ownership rights. They make plenty of profit from subscriptions and viewership, so not owning the content is not really much of a downside from them, as long as they have exclusive streaming rights, they are set. There is no greater risk. On the other hand, now a small portion of the viewership profits will be royalties that do go back to the Animation Studio, and any merchandise licensing, additional adaptations, etc, would stay with them as well. The biggest downside would have to do with what kind of contract Netflix is signing for this stuff. If they don't ever expire, like Netflix probably wants, things might become problematic in a few decades if the landscape has changed significantly. And I'm sure it will.

I'm sure if you're just looking at the example provided, like Netflix and Amazon, you're not going to see any risk whatsoever to the whole category of foreign distribution companies; but what about the other foreign distribution companies like. you know, Crunchy/Funny/Sentai/etc? Are you saying that they have the ability to essentially give the middle finger to companies in the production commitee and get away with it?