Crunchyroll used its first Anime Future Forum in New York to announce a cross-company content engine, new distribution surfaces and fresh fandom data that reframes anime as a compounding audience, not a niche interest.
Storyworks turns anime into a two-way pipeline
Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman and CEO Ravi Ahuja unveiled Storyworks, a division that will combine Crunchyroll, Aniplex, Japan’s creative community and Sony Pictures to develop global stories into anime and Japanese anime into live action. Tohru Iokibe, a 25-year Sony veteran, will run the unit, reporting to Crunchyroll chief content officer Asa Suehira, and will feed greenlight-ready projects into Crunchyroll’s HAYATE joint venture with Aniplex.
The pitch is creator first. “As anime grows, we have a responsibility to protect and amplify what makes it special while always keeping creators’ visions at the center,” Ahuja said. For streamers, that means a single Sony structure can now shepherd an IP from Japanese manga or anime to a global live-action adaptation, and back.
New surfaces: PS5, manga and measurement
The forum also laid out distribution moves that extend Crunchyroll beyond its own app.
- PlayStation 5: starting next spring, anime gets a dedicated space in the PS5 home experience, including Crunchyroll access and anime-inspired games. Crunchyroll and PlayStation are already working on the Ghost of Tsushima: Legends anime series.
- Crunchyroll Manga: the premium add-on expands to the U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, India, Nepal and Pakistan, with English-localised access to more than 250 titles from J-Novel Club, Square Enix and Yen Press at launch; VIZ Media titles are planned.
- Crunchyroll Compass: the data platform for licensors and partners adds country-level performance, digital manga reporting and MyAnimeList data.
The India, Nepal and Pakistan rollout matters for this market: manga becomes a premium retention add-on rather than a separate service, and advertisers get another anime touchpoint.
Fandom is compounding, not plateauing
New research with NRG, based on fans in 11 markets across four continents, found that outside Japan two out of three fans are watching more anime than they were three years ago, and more than three out of four have introduced anime to someone who had never watched it.
Crunchyroll president Rahul Purini used the theatrical business to make the point vivid: at last year’s Mexico City premiere of Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, fans lined up at 6 a.m. for a midday screening and filled more than 10 screens. That word-of-mouth behaviour is now showing up in the data.
Spider-Verse’s production lesson
Separately, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse co-director Bob Persichetti said the Spider-Verse team built a new “Story” system with Sony Pictures Animation, Imageworks and Unreal so creative decisions happen earlier. The panel showed work-in-progress footage continuing Across the Spider-Verse, including Miles Morales facing the Earth-42 version of himself known as The Prowler.
For film-business readers, the takeaway is structural: moving story, performance and lighting choices into pre-production is an attempt to buy back creative runway on a release-date-driven title.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
