Ask John: Why Don’t Hollywood Directors Option More Anime Titles?

Question:
With all the movies being produced in America from so many classic comic books and anime, like Witchblade coming from American media, why is it that we are not seeing more American film makers optioning anime titles? Wouldn’t a Cowboy Bebop movie be awesome with someone like Quentin Tarantino at the helm? I know he is a big anime fan.

Answer:
The answer to this question has more to do with the Hollywood film industry than anime, but I think I can answer this question regardless, and this week has been characterized by questions about live action adaptations of manga and anime anyway.

The majority of America’s film directors are, in effect, freelancers. Typically American movie production studios obtain the rights to produce feature film adaptations of Japanese properties. Then the studios hire screenwriters and directors to produce the films for the studio to distribute and sell. Average directors have the option to choose or refuse scripts offered to them, but most directors don’t have the ability to launch new film productions of their own choosing.

The exceptions are film directors that own or are major partners in film production studios, or directors that are able to convince investors and a distributor to support their creative vision. Director James Cameron, for example, is attached to the Battle Angel movie because his film production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, secured the film production rights. However, director James Wong was selected to direct Twentieth Century Fox’s Dragonball film several years after Fox obtained the rights to make the movie. And in this extreme example, Chinese director Ronny Yu negotiated the rights to produce an American live action Blood: The Last Vampire movie, wrote the screenplay, and announced his plans to direct the film. But since the film was financed by a studio, the studio removed Yu from the director’s seat, instead hiring Chris Nahon to direct the picture.

Numerous Hollywood film directors are aware of anime, and may even be fans. But due to the way the Hollywood film industry works, it’s studio executives, and not actually the directors that make movies, that decide what films get produced and which franchises get selected for feature film treatment.