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The following day, and in a different venue, MVM kick off another double bill of panels which would end with the State of the Industry panel.
The MVM panel was in a smaller room on one of the Charles Wilson
building's upper floors, but thankfully there was still enough room
to sit down. The panel featured MVM's founder and owner Tony
Allen and was a bit of a contrast from the ADV Panel the previous
day. Unlike their former rivals MVM are in great health
and had plenty of positive news for the future. The most
obvious sign of their current strength was their impressive license
announcements, which started with the previously announced comedy
Daphne in the Brilliant Blue, and got better. MVM
announced the acquisition of Romeo X Juliet, Desert Punk
and Solty Rei, all sci-fi anime from the ubiquitous Studio
Gonzo.
They also confirmed an upcoming box set release for Gun X Sword
and a thinpack box set for the excellent Haibane Renmei. |
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The license news was great, and Tony commented that their PR bod was looking forward to promoting Romeo X Juliet in particular, but things swiftly moved on to discussing other forms of distribution. Tony was quite frank on both and confirmed that MVM would not be going with Blu-Ray or digital distribution for the immediate future. Blu-Ray depended largely on Madman, the Australian company that authors MVM's anime DVDs. MVM use Madman to offset the costs of DVD authoring, and would do so with Blu-Ray too. However, Madman have taken a step back from Blu-Ray at present until the market grows and stabilises some more, so MVM will also |
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take a step back. Tony confirmed that MVM had tested the waters with Japanese companies about digital distribution, but had found them very reluctant to discuss it. Only Kodansha was really willing to entertain the idea and they wanted a lot of assurances and extra money that MVM can't provide. The problem is that Japanese companies see digital rights as separate to DVD rights, and as such a UK distributor will have to pay to license the series again. There's no real benchmark for digital distribution yet, so it's hard to predict if you would get a good comeback on the initial outlay, plus Japanese companies are getting increasingly worried about online piracy so aren't too keen on it. Because of this MVM have decided to wait, they think there is plenty of live left in the DVD market at the moment and will let bigger companies like Bandai test the waters! Tony did, however, suggest MVM were considering doing live action Asian cinema as a sideline. He intends to go through Madman's catalogue for films they have authored for Australia but have yet to have a UK release, and then look to license them. He did stress that it would be a sideline to the anime business, but he felt it would be a good way to diversify without stepping too far away from their core business. It was at this point that the conversation skewed a little bit and focused on the industry as well as FUNimation. People may remember that MVM used to release FUNimation's anime titles in the UK, but when Navarre took over FUNimation in the US they decided to shift UK distribution to Revelation Films. Tony stressed that the decision wasn't anything to do with FUNimation or MVM, it was simply because Navarre already owned Revelation and wanted to streamline their UK operations. When asked what he thought of FUNimation's growing monopoly in the US anime market and the effects this is having on the UK, Tony was again quite frank. He didn't believe the monopoly was a good thing, as FUNimation are picking up more titles than they can release and, as yet, are refusing to sublicense them to anyone. It's hard for smaller companies like MVM to compete against them and he feels that the UK may lose some titles because FUNimation hold the rights. He was also worried that they could become the only company producing anime dubs, and this could also hamper releases and bump up costs. Tony was quite philosophical in the end though. He felt that there was business to be had as in independent and may start backtracking to release recent titles that they had passed over if newer licenses dry up. He confirmed that the cost meant that MVM won't release straight to box set, and that they also would try to avoid releasing anime with a single language track because sales are considerably lower for these. When asked about potential licenses of Tenchi and Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo, Tony did say these are something he wasn't considering at the moment. Tony explained that first and foremost he was a businessman and therefore didn't want to take a risk on a long series or an expensive niche title, particularly after his previous experience with Sailor Moon. However, he did confirm that he was considering Slayers because of the new series currently being shown in Japan. He was still undecided as three long series would be a considerable financial risk, especially considering the series' age. It's good to see that older series are still being considered, so it'll be interesting to see what MVM have lined up for 2009! There were a few other interesting tidbits scattered about as well:
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