Billboard Women in Music 2025
Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we shine a spotlight on key executives and companies outside of the U.S. shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week, we’re talking to Toei Company President and CEO Fumio Yoshimura about the Japanese studio’s ambitious growth and global expansion plans, which include a slate of international projects and co-productions; ramping up international sales of its existing content; and upgrading its physical production facilities in Tokyo and Kyoto. Deadline sat down with Yoshimura ahead of his trip to Los Angeles to meet with major Hollywood studios and streamers.
One of Japan’s oldest studios, Toei Company has been producing film and TV content for more than 70 years, across multiple genres including historical samurai flicks, contemporary crime dramas and yakuza movies and its signature ‘tokusatsu’ (live-action special effects) genre, including the Kamen Rider, Super Sentai and Power Rangers franchises. The studio has a library of 4,400 theatrical movies, 39,000 episodes of TV drama productions and more than 600 episodes of video streaming content, with recent movie releases including Oshi No Ko – The Final Act, a live-action adaptation of a popular manga, and period action thriller Muromachi Outsiders, directed by Yu Irie.
Toei Co is also a majority shareholder in Toei Animation, which produces hot anime franchises including Dragon Ball, One Piece, Saint Seiya, Slam Dunk and Sailor Moon. While the two companies are under separate management, Toei Co is handling live-action remake rights to Toei Animation content internationally.
Like many Japanese studios, Toei has long been focused on its huge domestic Japanese market, but is now looking overseas with a slate of development projects aimed at international markets, both original works as well as remakes of its hottest IPs. The studio also has plans to ramp up sales of its existing content, increasing international revenue’s share of total income from 30% to 50% by 2033; upgrade its studio facilities and post-production labs in Tokyo and Kyoto; and work on co-productions with China and other Asian territories.
“In the past, Japan had a large population and therefore market for entertainment content, so we didn’t see the necessity of going overseas,” says Yoshimura, who has been with the studio for 37 years and was appointed president and CEO in 2023. “But now our population is declining, a trend that is not likely to be reversed, so now is the time for us to create new strategies.”
Yoshimura says North America and Asian markets are the first priority for the studio as it embarks on global expansion. “Asia accounts for more than half the world’s population, local contents are growing in nearly every Asian market, and the region is closer to us culturally, so it’s an obvious place to start.
“But North America is also a huge market, so of course we would want to roll out there as well. We’d like to work on partnerships and affiliations, trying to bridge the gap we have currently. We’re starting with production so we’re looking for partners that we can co-produce and create with – the idea is to produce content that can work in the North American market.”
Toei has earmarked $2BN (JPY300BN) for its expansion – $1.6BN (JPY240BN) for content and $400M (JPY60BN) to strengthen business operations. The growth strategy was first set out in a ten-year ‘Toei New Wave’ vision plan in 2023 – the year after the studio celebrated its highest ever box office with releases including One Piece Film: Red and The First Slam Dunk – and since then the studio has established a production team to work on international projects.
While titles and details are yet to be announced, the international slate includes a big-budget historical series based on the period of Japanese history that gave birth to the samurai class, which is being co-scripted with U.S. writers, and which Yoshimura describes as a “Game Of Thrones-style big-budget action drama”. The studio is also working on a New York-set movie, which is being set up as a co-production between the U.S., Japan and Taiwan, as well as a rare co-production between Japan and Africa. Also in the works is a superhero character developed for international markets – Toei’s first new superhero character in over 50 years.
“We also want to look at how we can expand our existing tokusatsu special effects franchises – Kamen Rider, Super Sentai and Power Rangers – this has always been Toei’s forte and we’re hoping to expand these properties,” Yoshimura says.
In Japan, the studio is aligned with a complete distribution chain across all platforms, either owned by itself or with partners, including the T-Joy Co theatre chain with 230 screens at 23 sites. Thanks to blockbuster anime releases, Japan’s box office has seen relatively healthy recovery since the pandemic – although last year it decreased 6.5% to $1.33BN (JPY207BN), mostly due to a lack of Hollywood releases – and the market is one of the few globally that still has significant DVD/Blu-ray revenue, at least from fan-driven sales of collectible DVDs. But Yoshimura acknowledges that the market has grown as big as it’s ever going to get, hence the shift towards international. “Japan is the second biggest box office market in Asia behind China, but this won’t grow dramatically,” he says.
Yoshimura also wants to get the message across to Hollywood that Japan’s notoriously conservative and risk-averse entertainment industry is open to change. Most content in Japan is financed through the ‘production committee’ (seisaku iinkai) system, under which a consortium of up to a dozen local studios, broadcasters, video companies and ad agencies will co-finance a project in return for a set proportion of returns. In the past, this has made it difficult for foreign companies to get a piece of the action.
“The production committee system is a very unique way of doing business in Japan, but we don’t think its suitable for foreign markets,” Yoshimura says. “We’re looking at much more simple financing structures such as a 50:50 partnerships with our foreign partners.”
Japan’s New International Push
Toei is one of several Japanese entertainment giants making an ambitious international play, for all the reasons outlined by Yoshimura, who also say they’re prepared to change corporate habits set in stone for decades. In addition to facing stagnation in their local market, they’re inspired by the international success of Japanese-themed content including Warner Bros/Legendary’s Monsterverse franchise, which rebooted Toho’s Godzilla character, and Disney/Hulu’s Emmy-award winning series Shogun. They’re also invigorated by the Japanese government’s introduction of a 50% production rebate, which is starting to bring a larger volume of international projects to shoot in Japan.
Most of the Japanese studios are already working with the global streamers – with Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ all identifying Japan as a priority market within Asia – but so far the territory has not seen the massive inflation in production costs experienced by markets such as the UK or South Korea. Toei has so far worked mostly with Prime Video, which premiered a spinoff series of Oshi No Ko – The Final Act, and has acquired other Toei content including tokusatsu series Kamen Rider Black Sun.
While most Japanese contents are based on familiar manga and anime properties, one reason why the market is regarded as risk-averse, Yoshimura says Shogun was a game-changer in that it proved you can have a globally successful show that is not based on internationally recognised IP. “The advantage of manga or anime contents is that they’re based on familiar properties, while live-action content, even if based on a novel, might have very low awareness,” Yoshimura says. “Shogun was a breakthrough because it proved that live-action content based on Japanese themes could be easily understood by a global audience.”
However, it’s perhaps not surprising that Toei is currently receiving the most enquiries about adaptations of its popular anime and tokusatsu properties. The studio will be treading carefully when it comes to remakes, as several high-profile live-action adaptations of Japanese anime properties have bombed at the international box office in the past. Remakes on streaming have been more successful, including Netflix’s live-action version of One Piece, but that project highlights the complex nature of manga and anime licensing.
In Japan, manga artists are highly regarded and usually retain the rights to their creations, so while Toei Animation produces the One Piece anime series, Netflix worked directly with its creator, Eiichiro Oda, on the live-action series. Likewise, Toei and Saban are not involved in the live-action remake of Power Rangers, currently in the works at Disney+, as Hasbro acquired international rights excluding Asia to the franchise in 2018. However, Toei has an experienced international production and licensing team on hand to help potential partners navigate this complex landscape.
China & Other Asian Markets
In the rest of Asia, Toei has already been collaborating with local companies, co-producing anime series Voltes V Legacy with the Philippines’ GMA Network, while Toei Animation signed a strategic partnership with Korea’s CJ ENM in 2021. Now the studio is eyeing the China market, where Japanese anime is by far the largest import category behind Hollywood movies, and where Toei’s The First Slam Dunk grossed $90m (RMB663m) in 2023.
“The next step is to work with Chinese producers to create local IPs, which will be regarded as Chinese content, rather than imported Japanese content,” Yoshimura explains. “Production capabilities are improving rapidly in China and Toei wants to co-produce both animation and live-action with Chinese partners.”
Co-production is becoming a growing trend across East Asia, as not just Japan and China, but also Korea and Southeast Asia explore ways to pool financial resources and expand their markets in an era of uneven post-pandemic recovery. China may just have enjoyed its biggest hit ever with $2BN-grossing animation Nezha 2, but last year the total box office was down 23% compared to 2023.
Studio & Other Tech Upgrades
Of course, box office recovery across the region has been impacted by the rise of streaming, and Toei acknowledges business models are changing and is exploring different ways of working with global and local streamers. But the studio is also investing in tech upgrades for its cinema chain, as well as programming alternative content, including live streaming of concerts and other immersive events. Yoshimura says he’s excited by developments such as the recent live streaming of a concert by K-pop artists Tomorrow X Together, during which the audience could wear interactive goggles to follow their favorite member of the band. “We need to offer something different to lure audiences to cinemas and we’re finding this content is attractive, even if it’s more expensive than watching a film.”
Tech upgrades are also on the cards at Toei’s two studios and various post-production facilities in Tokyo and Kyoto. With the Japanese government recently confirming the extension of its 50% rebate, Toei is expecting more international shoots to travel to Japan. To meet demand, the studio has opened a 270-degree virtual production stage in Tokyo and is investing an additional $240M (JPY36BN) in renovating its studios, as well as improving its VFX, AI, digital humans and other tech capabilities. “Since Shogun, we’ve been contacted by multiple companies interested in creating a samurai movie or content they want to shoot in Kyoto, so we anticipate significant growth there,” Yoshimura says.
All these developments can be seen as part of a changing corporate culture in Japan. Long regarded as the country of stasis and stagflation, and currently grappling with the blessings and curses of a weak yen, the country is ready to play a greater role in the global entertainment ecosystem moving forward. Yoshimura observes that years of deflation mean that production costs have remained low in Japan, while they ballooned in neighboring markets that experienced rapid growth prior and/or post the pandemic.
“The upside of deflation is that we’ve developed skills in creating high-quality content on a low budget,” Yoshimura says. “The next step for us is learning how to produce larger-scale content, and for that we need to work with Hollywood and other foreign studios. We want to learn from them and share our own knowledge and expertise as well.”
