WB involvement with Japanese films

[Aaron Gerow]

Thanks to Alex for reminding us of transnational issues. It is 
certainly the case that Warner Bros Japan is complicating matters, as 
are the activities of Ichise in Hollywood. But we cannot write out the 
nation just yet. All the talk celebrating hoga topping 50 percent in 
2006 is based precisely on a notion of national cinema that finds a 
distinction between hoga and yoga, and which one is on top, very 
important. Part of this concern is based on industrial fact. While 
European and increasingly American films are often international 
co-productions, those are still very much the minority in Japan, so the 
case of a Hollywood major funding and distributing a film with Japanese 
cast and crew is still significant news. Certainly the term "Hollywood" 
is not self-evident, not only because it is not clearly American (some 
majors are owned by foreign companies), but also because it has been 
used to name so much (a film style, an industrial center, a culture, 
etc.). I still do think "Hollywood" can function as convenient 
shorthand for denoting certain concentrations of capital and imbalances 
in economic trade. The Hollywood majors may not be evidently American 
(though many still conceive of them that way), but they definitely have 
their own interests at heart and pursue various options to overcome the 
opposition, including measures to suppress local film production and 
distribution (a infamous tactic, for instance, being to force local 
distributors to play junk films A and B if they want Spiderman 3). The 
playing field may not be black versus white anymore, but it is still 
quite uneven. And as one can see from Japanese government policies 
towards the contents industry, film policy can still see all this 
competition as very much a national issue.

As for Death Note, there actually were a lot of complaints in the 
industry that leaked into the papers about how the films were 
distributed. The first film did well at the BO, but it was then shown 
on TV only a few days before the second episode opened at the theaters. 
This new tactic proved successful: the second film did a lot better 
than the first. But many in the industry, especially in the DVD and 
rental markets, complained this broke the rules about when to issue the 
DVD or when to broadcast a film. I don't think the complaints were 
necessarily directed at Warner Brothers--it was NTV that showed it on 
TV--but there was a lot of resentment against such "different" tactics.


Aaron Gerow
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu