Viewpoints: Acquisition strategies
Jerome Mazandarani
Acquisitions & Marketing Manager
Manga Entertainment LTD (A Starz Media Company)
United Kingdom
What are your acquisition strategies?
Manga has already identified what features and programs it wants to acquire for 2010 release on DVD and Blu-ray. There has been a lot of consolidation in the UK anime home video market over the past two years leaving Manga in the enviable position of being the only major buyer of new content. Primarily we only want to acquire content that is being picked up for distribution in North America and will have an English language dub created for it. The cost of dubbing for a UK release makes the whole process unprofitable otherwise.
What products are you looking for?
Primarily Japanese animation (anime). Feature length animated movies perform very well for us, particularly the big prestige pictures like "The Girl who leapt through time" and beautifully executed sci-fi like Studio Gonzo’s Origin: Spirit of the Past. And of course, the big anime franchise’s like Naruto, Bleach, Death Note and Fullmetal Alchemist will continue to perform well in the UK DVD market. MIPCOM provides a good platform to see new Japanese TVs series that have started to air over the summer in Japan. It allows me to follow the Western fan forums and news sites and pick up hints and tips about what the hottest new shows are. We also look to buy interesting genre fare from Asia including martial arts, samurai, ninja, horror, action and thrillers.
Can you name the most successful titles that you acquired this year?
Afro Samurai Resurrection from Studio Gonzo has performed very well for us on DVD and Blu-ray. Death Note and Bleach Series 3 have also performed very well for Viz Media who we distribute in the UK and Ireland. Naruto continues to perform incredibly well for us. We have sold more than 165,000 units of Naruto Unleashed half season box sets over the past several years.
What products will be in demand during MIPCOM 2009?
Manga’s parent company, Starz Entertainment has produced for its Starz Originals channel the brand new 11 part mini-series, Spartacus. It looks awesome. Imagine Rome meets 300. I think this will be huge for the European markets. Our sister company, film Roman with Starz has also produced its second DTV animated feature with EA Games, Dante’s Inferno. Like "Dead Space Downfall", this will be a feature length animated movie for adults based on a brand new action-adventure game from EA called "Dante’s Inferno". The game takes its lead from the first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the classical 14th Century poem that depicts nine circles of Hell. The perfect devices for a hack ‘n’ slash videogame. Like the game, the movie will be split into distinct chapters, each being produced by a different animation studio including Production IG ("Kill Bill", "Blood the Last Vampire", "Animatrix") and Manglobe ("Ergo Proxy").
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