Hollywood in decline?

By Mark Schilling

Who's afraid of big, bad Hollywood? Not the Japanese film industry any more.

"Hollywood films are in decline," Kazuo Kuroi, the fiesty president of Kadokawa

Pictures recently told Screen International. "They have less and less to say to Japanese

audiences today." Kuroi is putting his company's money where his mouth is: Together

with corporate partners Kadokawa recently launched a Y3.6 billion ($33 million) film

fund for underwriting a slate of nearly 30 films, including several that aim to go

head-to-head with Hollywood's best. One, The Big Goblin War, is a revival of a popular

1960s and 1970s genre of films about goblins and other spooks from Japanese folklore.

Think Harry Potter with a Japanese accent.

Another indication of Hollywood's loosening hold on its biggest overseas market:

Leading  Japanese distributors like Shochiku and Gaga and even the local subsidiaries of

Hollywood majors are booking more films from Japan and other points East, less

middling Hollywood fare. "We used to buy American films in order of size, starting from

the top in terms of budget and working our way down," commented Shochiku

acquisitions manager Kaz Moriguchi. "Now we're looking more for films with something

unique, no matter where they come from." In other words, so long Steven Seagal, hello

Kim Kyu Hyun, whose Korean thriller Tube is a recent addition to the Shochiku line-up.

Does this mean that the Japan film industry will soon rejoin Korea's in grabbing back a

majority share of its market from the Hollywood grip? Probably not -- Japanese

moviegoers may have pushed the local weeper Crying Out for Love In the Centre of the

World toward the $100 million mark, but they bought even more tickets to Harry Potter 3,

which claimed nearly a fifth of the country's 2,800 screens.