‘Suzume’ Success Built on Growing Impact of Japanese Animation: ‘Shinkai’s Movies Have Power to Stimulate Empathy’

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Growing streaming subscriptions lifted the bottom line at Tencent Music Entertainment, in the third quarter of its financial year, despite a top line decrease in revenues. Net profits hit $173 million (RMB1.26 billion), representing a 16% year-over-year increase. Tencent Music, which is a major stakeholder in both Spotify and Universal Music Group, reported figures on Tuesday, for the three months from July to end September 2023.

Greta Gerwig is opening up about Hollywood.

EXCLUSIVE: Crunchyroll announced today tha auteur filmmaker Makoto Shinkai’s animated FILM Suzume will come to its streaming service exclusively on November 16. The award-winning film will be available in North America and all of Crunchyroll’s international territories (excluding Asia and France).

Four days after the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike, Netflix rolled out the blue carpet for the first post-strike Hollywood premiere of a major studio production attended by talent, Season 6 of the streamer’s British royal drama The Crown.

William Earl Netflix film chief Scott Stuber once ran Universal Studios – today he sometimes feels like the operator of “the AMC 6000” given the volume of movies that Netflix produces and acquires. From Greta Gerwig’s plans for Narnia adaptations to wooing Denzel Washington and Steven Spielberg, Stuber shared Netflix’s vision of film’s future in a wide-ranging Q&A with Variety executive editor Brent Lang that was held Nov. 8 as part of Variety’s Business Managers Elite Breakfast presented by City National Bank.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief All three of Sony Group Corporation’s entertainment segments – film and TV, music and Games and network services – improved their profitability between July and September, the second quarter of the Japan and Hollywood conglomerate’s financial year. Group revenues increased by 8% in local currency terms to JPY2.83 trillion, compared with JPY2.75 trillion in the same quarter last year. But Sony’s financial services unit and its entertainment technology segment pulled down group sales and profitability. The group’s net after tax profits dropped a hefty 29% to JPY200 billion.

Christopher Nolan is on the cover of this week’s issue of Variety, out now.

Firefighters continue to battle a stubborn fire at a hangar at the former Tustin Air Base today where many film and TV series have been shot.

Crunchyroll has acquired the North American and select global theatrical rights for SPY x FAMILY CODE: White.Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures Entertainment will bring the first film installment of the  television series that’s directed by Takashi Katagiri. written by Ichiro Okouchi, and the original story by Tatsuya Endo. The television series SPY x FAMILY originally debuted on April 9, 2022 and was quickly embraced by fans across the globe. The second season launched on October 7 on Crunchyroll.

told The Sunday Times of London.“Paul was going to write, I was going to open a hairdresser’s, George would get a garage,” he continued. “But it went on and then it ended.

EXCLUSIVE: Crunchyroll announced today a special one-day-only private pop-up installation MAKOTO SHINKAI: A Journey from Voices of a Distant Star through Suzume which will explore the complete works of Japanese animation filmmaker Makoto Shinkai.

Joe Russo, the Avengers: Endgame co-director, is playfully taking a job at Martin Scorsese after the director Killers of the Flower Moon director took a dig at Marvel films.

SZA is revealing her true thoughts.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hong Kong-based sales firm Autumn Sun has acquisition worldwide rights to Chinese family-oriented animated film “I Am T-Rex,” directed by Shang Ming and Si Lin, produced by Beijing Create Dream. “I Am T-Rex” follows a young T-Rex named Didi in her coming of age journey after the death of powerful father T-Rex Rog, who is killed by a rival dino gang. She must learn the ways of the T-Rex and claim the crown again with the help of her uncle and a very caring friend.

Marvel director Joe Russo has seemingly taken a dig at Martin Scorsese over his box office success.The man behind Avengers: Endgame – which is the second highest grossing film of all time – uploaded a clip on Instagram which shows Scorsese addressing his dog as Oscar.The clip then cuts to Russo who says: “Argh look he’s got schnauzer, I love schnauzers and his name is Oscar which is really cute,” in reference to Scorsese’s Academy Award nominations over the years and his solitary win for his 2006 film The Departed.He then shows his own schnauzer dog, which he calls “Box Office” which is thought to be a clear nod to his and his brother Anthony Russo’s Marvel box office hit films.A post shared by The Russo Brothers (@therussobrothers)The clip comes after Scorsese has in the past taken several digs at Marvel movies.He previously described the movies as “not cinema”, while he also said more recently about the glut of comic book movies in cinemas: “The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture. Because there are going to be generations now that think movies are only those – that’s what movies are.”When the interviewer proposed many people already think that way, Scorsese agreed, adding: “They already think that. Which means that we have to then fight back stronger.

Pop legend Sonia first shot to fame as a fresh-faced 18 year old in 1989, with her No 1 chart hit, You'll Never Stop Me Loving You. She went on to have a string of further hits while working with the legendary songwriting and music production trio Stock Aitken Waterman, including Can't Forget You and Listen To Your Heart.The singing superstar even represented the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1993 – coming a very respectable second place with Better The Devil You Know – and was the first female artist to have five Top 20 singles from one album. But incredibly Sonia, who's now 52, hardly seems to have changed a bit since her heyday, recently appearing on BBC Breakfast looking much younger than her age.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japanese drama film “Mountain Woman,” which was one of the standouts titles at last year’s Tokyo International Film Festival, is to be represented for global sales by EST N8. Inspired by “The Legends of Tono,” which is Japanese folklore from the Tohoku region, the film depicts a small Japanese village overrun by famine. The burden falls upon Rin, a woman whose connections with the spirit and natural worlds allow her to rise amidst familial conflicts.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Leading Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou has a tough guy exterior – leather jackets, black shirts and a square jaw that has earned him acting awards alongside his top-level credentials as cinematographer and director of “Hero,” “The Road Home” – but on a visit to the Tokyo International Film Festival this week he was all smiles and frank talk. Zhang received a lifetime achievement award on Monday. On Tuesday the festival gave a gala screening to his historical blockbuster “Full River Red.” And at a Wednesday masterclass, Zhang was more gushed usable details about his process and frank advice for newcomers. “To be a film director you need to be physically in good shape. No smoking and no drinking,” he advised. “I generally adopt a two-stage process,” he explained.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Toei Animation, the Japanese studio behind “Dragon Ball,” “Slam Dunk” and the “One Piece” cartoon franchises, is planning to open a European office in Italy. That may be followed by others in Latin America and India as well as a ramp up of its international production. The group already has a handful of overseas regional offices covering Asia, the Americas and Australasia, and Europe-Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Hollywood loves to repeat success, and now more than ever it needs to. If there’s a promising way to draw people into movie theaters that the industry doesn’t capitalize on, it will only be colluding in the decay of its own future. So when I came out of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” having experienced, for the first time in a while, what it was like a share a concert film with an ecstatic audience, one of my first thoughts was, “How could they do this again?” You might say that’s a silly question, since it has one obvious answer: They can’t.