K2 Pictures Producer Muneyuki Kii: "Only Japanese people say that movies don't make money" [CINEMORE ACADEMY Vol.32]

K2 Pictures Inc. has launched with the goal of "creating a new ecosystem for Japanese films." During his time at T-Joy and Toei, founder and CEO Muneyuki Kii has been involved in the distribution of " Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not ) Redo" (2012) and "Evangelion : 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time" (2021), as well as planning and producing a number of popular and hit works, such as the " Inunaki Village " series (2019-), " The Blood of Wolves " series (2018, 2021), " First Love " (2020), " The Bride of Rip Van Winkle " (2016), " Kirie's Song " (2023), " Revolver Lily " (2023), and " Shin Kamen Rider: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time" (2023).

In May of this year, they announced that they would be forming a Japanese film production fund called "K2P Film Fund I" and working with world-renowned creators such as Shunji Iwai, Hirokazu Koreeda, Kazuya Shiraishi, Miwa Nishikawa, Takashi Miike, and animation production company MAPPA Inc. They held a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival in the same month and made a presentation to the film industry and media from around the world who had gathered there.

Kii has launched a new structure, the Production Fund, in the Japanese film industry where the production committee system is the norm. His bold and fast actions, which have not been seen much in the Japanese film industry until now, are surprising, and his moves, which foreshadow a new stage in Japanese film, are exciting. What exactly is Kii aiming for? He spoke calmly and eloquently, using a Kansai dialect and a few laughs.

Index

• Started his career at the cinema
• The world is paying attention to Japan
• Escaping “Slow Death”
• The distance between producer and director
• To Europe, Asia and North America
• Only Japanese people say "movies don't make money"

Started his career at the cinema

Q: Mr. Kii, you produced hit films as head producer at Toei, but why did you leave Toei and start K2 Pictures? Could you not have considered taking the same action within Toei?

Kii: I couldn't have done it at Toei. I was employed by a subsidiary of Toei and started my career as a ticket-taker at a movie theater in Hiroshima. I wanted to be a movie producer, but I wasn't good enough at it so I couldn't get there (laughs). But I also had a lot of good fortune. The job of a place called "XX Toei" is usually just a cinema operator. When customers come, you tear off their tickets, let them watch, and send them home. That's why they're called "kotatsu", but that's the job of a movie theater. But at the time, Hiroshima, Shizuoka, and Sendai were cities of a certain size that were out of reach of the Tokyo headquarters and Kansai branch, so we had to do our own advertising. But that was really good. There was a sense of treating movies as a business. Anyway, I worked hard on what was in front of me so that I could bring people to the movie theater.

After that, I moved to a company called T-Joy Co., Ltd. and started up a movie theater called "Shinjuku Wald 9". I was involved in programming as the theater manager. T-Joy was a company that operated movie theaters, but it also got involved in film distribution and production, and in 2012 it made over 8 billion yen in box office revenue. At the time, the parent company Toei had around 100 people and made about 10 billion yen in box office revenue, while we were about 5 people and made over 8 billion yen. At the time, Toei and T-Joy had the same president, so he got angry at us and said, "You guys are going too far" (laughs). So I came to Toei and was asked to make movies, and I started working as a producer at the headquarters.

In that sense, I have done everything from downstream to upstream in the film industry. I think it is a unique career that is rare even in the Japanese film industry. If you stay in the same place in the industry, you won't see it, but if you change your perspective, you will see things that you can see in the theater, programming, distribution, and production positions where the interests of each are conflicting. That's why I have thought, proposed, changed, and challenged, wondering why things can't be done more. I have always told the company, "Let's create a fund," and "Since you have two film studios, you should declare a stable supply and make more and more. As a large company, you should be able to take that much risk, and if you think about your works as a portfolio, Toei will survive." But still, nothing changed. I felt like I had been in a state of mental paralysis for the past 30 years or so. So I wanted to take on the challenge of changing the issues I felt in the Japanese film industry, and decided to move on.

The world is paying attention to Japan