What with all their acquisitions this week, Viz is a natural for an interview about their live action program. They graciously agreed to do an email interview last week and here it is, in all its glory.

First up, Manami Iiboshi, Director of Marketing for VIZ Pictures who release the live action films.

Why did VIZ decide to get into the live action movie business?
The whole idea of starting a live action line was brought by Seiji Horibuchi, a founder of VIZ Media, and VIZ Pictures was incorporated in late 2005 as an affiliate company to specialize in movies and other visual entertainment besides manga and anime. One of the key factors behind this decision was the success of KAMIKAZE GIRLS, which VIZ Media distributed. This movie was a perfect showcase of Japanese culture, with cuteness, coolness and craziness all packed into one movie. Since Seiji founded VIZ Media with his friends in 1986, U.S. fans of manga and anime have helped the company grow very quickly. Now we’d like to introduce live-action films that reflect the same J-pop sensibility to those fans.

Why did VIZ then decide to act even crazier and distribute these movies theatrically?
One reason is that many of the licensors expect us to do theatrical releases, so we want to make them happy - especially the producers and directors. It’s always great to bring their work to a big screen outside Japan.  All the theatres we're working with are art houses, who are cool with showing English-subtitled foreign movies. We’re very happy and grateful to work with these theatres.

We know watching movies in the theatre is a totally priceless experience, even if distributing movies out there doesn’t make a lot of money for us, so it’s totally worth it. It’s like a promotional tour. Even most Hollywood movies don’t earn enough profits to cover the gigantic costs of a theatrical release.

Does VIZ view the theatrical release primarily as a marketing tool for the DVD?
It depends on the title, since we’re releasing some titles straight to DVD. We do limited theatrical engagements in major cities for titles we think would be well received by a wider audience. By distributing movies theatrically, we can reach press in each city, and bring awareness of the movie to film critics and the market, as well as progressive cosmopolitan filmgoers and the existing foreign film audience in North America. And of course it’s always good to get a nice quote from newspapers for DVD sales.

Has it been hard out there?
Unfortunately in the U.S., where a handful of major theatre chains always rule, it is very rare and difficult to get subtitled foreign movies a traditional theatrical wide release, like many Hollywood movies. However, we're hoping to find a way to roll out films to more theatres in more cities in the future.

We're even in the process of building a new art-house theatre in San Francisco, VIZ's hometown. In addition to the theater, this building will house a J-Pop bookstore, café, and some girls’ fashion retailers from Tokyo.  It's scheduled to open in the winter of 2008.

How does VIZ determine what it acquires? And does it plan to focus only on Japanese movies right now?
We aim to deliver bright and positive messages to wide audiences, and establish "J-Pop movies" as one of the most exciting genres in film today. We know the popular Japanese movie genres here are horror and violent or samurai/ninja action movies, and there are so many of those available in the market already, which is really great. But we want to explore something new, so we carefully choose movies which represent “J-Pop” from our point of view, and that's our difference.

Right now we're still a small start-up venture so we don't have the resources to expand to non-Japanese movies yet, but we'd definitely love to. We're just waiting to see if we have any lucky encounters, like when we found KAMIKAZE GIRLS in Tokyo.

What are the plans for VIZ Pictures into 2008?
Our releases for 2008 are pretty much all set - we’re releasing 8-9 titles next year. We can’t announce all the titles yet since we’re still in the licensing process, but more than half of them are based on popular manga & anime, and the rest will be funky & edgy comedies. Since we are fans of Kaiju Shakedown, I promise to keep you updated!

Then we had some questions answered by Brian Ige, Director of Sales, Home Entertainment for VIZ Media that deal directly with home video.

The VIZ releases have gotten really great reviews but I know that the theatrical box office hasn't been so good. How has the reaction of the home video market been?
Many of these films are critically acclaimed in Japan, for instance, HULA GIRLS was Japan’s official selection for the Academy Awards.  The current fan base has fully embraced these films, however, we are still in the process of building and identifying this market.  Our hope is to make VIZ Pictures synonymous with cutting edge filmmaking in Japan, not only as an extension of VIZ Media but a solid stand-alone brand.

What are the challenges of starting a new label for live action films these days?
The biggest challenge is to break through the stereotype of current live-action Japanese cinema, as well as the fight for existing shelf space with our retailers.  Many retailers don’t have “foreign” film sections and those that do stock mostly foreign horror or action films. 

Another challenge has been identifying the foreign live-action market and coming up with ways to continuously get the word out on our current and future releases. 

What has been the most difficult part about starting this line? The easiest part?
The most difficult part has been educating our buyers and consumers about Japanese cinema and letting them know that there are great films coming out of Japan that have nothing to do with horror or martial arts.  They touch upon subjects like love, humor, as well as challenges that people face in their lives and how they overcome these obstacles.

There really isn’t anything easy about starting a new line but I can say that knowing our anime customer has made it easier to help identify and build this new market.

Is it very different to market live action films as opposed to anime, or do you basically market them the same way?
Our feeling is that if you are a fan of anime & manga, you will enjoy the live-action versions of these properties.  

We do see these as 2 separate marketing strategies with some cross-over based on any tie-ins between the live action and either anime or manga, in some cases both.  The goal of VIZ Pictures is to release films catering to the “Manga/Anime Generation,” people that grew up reading manga or watching anime and are now looking for something more.  We’re confident that we will be able to identify and/or create a solid market for this type of product.

One big difference to our current marketing strategy for live-action vs. anime has been our ability to use the power of the online space for our live-action promotions.  Sites such as social networks, video blogs, YouTube, etc., give you maximum visibility with minimal effort if utilized properly.

 

I'm always going to give Viz a little bit of a hard time because I feel like the pieces of their theatrical release program are not yet working well together. They're acquiring worthwhile movies, designing good materials, but they seem to neglect the mainstream movie press in their publicity efforts, and the lack of budget is undermining the reach of their theatrical program. We're not talking a lot of money here compared to what has to be spent to acquire these titles - I've seen situations where simply having more than one print of a film they're distributing would have made a huge difference in terms of the release.

But they also deserve credit for doing something no one else is doing, which is picking up good movies that aren't genre fare and distributing them as best they can in an unforgiving market. There are now good, Region 1 DVDs of THE TASTE OF TEA, LINDA LINDA LINDA, PING PONG and KAMIKAZE GIRLS and that's something they should be proud of. Let's hope that the more movies they distribute the better they'll get at generating a maximum amount of attention on a budget.