Shochiku to sell Ofuna

[Aaron Gerow]

The big film story circulating around this weekend was that Shochiku has 
entered negotiations to sell its Ofuna Studios to Kamakura Women's 
University, which plans to use the space for a campus expansion.  The 
negotiations will probably take a while since Shochiku has been 
entertaining other options for parts of the studio like the former 
Kamakura Cinema World section, which some want to turn into a shopping 
mall.  Shochiku also has to figure out what studio it will then use for 
its film production.

Company officials are not saying much about the negotiations, most taking 
the public stance that a studio is the life blood of a film company and 
that Shochiku has not decided to sell Ofuna.

The news was so big it even hit some of the foreign news services:

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/re/story.html?s=v/nm/19990627/re/japan
_film_1.html

Ofuna was built in 1936 when Shochiku wanted to expand and modernize its 
facilities (then in Kamata) to compete with the then new Toho group.  
Most of the company's famous works have been filmed there.

In other news, Toho, Toei and Shochiku have apparently agreed to join 
forces to cooperatively build multiplex theaters throughout the country.  
The first such theater will be a 12-screen operation in front of Sapporo 
Station in Hokkaido to open in 2003.  This will be the first time in 
history that the three companies will be jointly operating a theater.  
Most see the move as an effort to combat the invasion of foreign-funded 
companies like Warner Mycal and UCI that began building multiplexes when 
most of the Japanese majors were ignoring them.

Aaron Gerow
Yokohama National University
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