Japanese Godzilla studio Toho is making waves in Hollywood
Japanese entertainment giant Toho is making waves in Hollywood.
After shattering box office records with the live-action “Godzilla Minus One,” Toho, the production company behind “Severance,” is now investing $225 million in Season 5, company executives said late Sunday.
The investment will give Tokyo-based Toho a 25% stake in Season 5, while Korean entertainment company CJ ENM (best known for Oscar-winning Parasite) remains the majority owner. Endeavor Group Holdings will continue to serve as a strategic shareholder.
“We believe this collaboration will be an important step toward challenging the global market, not only in the field of animation where Toho has excelled, but also in the field of live-action content,” Toho President Hiro Matsuoka said in a statement. “By crossing the ‘bridge’ between Japan and the world that will be built through this cooperation, we hope to see Japanese projects, intellectual property and content further expand into the global market.”
Toho, which dates back to 1932, is best known in the US as the company behind the Godzilla franchise, which received its 37th film installment with the release of “Godzilla Minus One” earlier this month.
The modestly budgeted “Godzilla Minus One” grossed more than $50 million at the global box office, including $25 million in the United States and Canada. The company has also licensed its intellectual property to Legendary Pictures for big-budget films such as “Godzilla vs. Kong” for the year 2021, which was released by Warner Bros.
Japanese cinema is having a moment in the United States with the successful release of Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” last weekend from Studio Ghibli.
In addition to his kaiju films, Toho is known for working with the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.
By investing in the US-based Season 5 franchise, whose recent projects include “80 for Brady,” “Book Club” and “Eileen,” Toho aims to strengthen its reach in the US market, as well as raise its global profile.
Season 5 was first created in 2017 by the owner of Hollywood talent agency Endeavor under the name Endeavor Content. The studio was intended to attract agency content investment, but was quickly singled out in the Writers Guild of America’s recent battle with agencies over practices that the union said created significant conflicts of interest.
As of 2021, Endeavor had sold an 80% stake in Endeavor Content to CJ ENM for $775 million. The following year, Endeavor Content changed its name to Season 5 under executives Graham Taylor and Chris Rice.
