Just as cinemas in Japan have taken a financial hit due to the coronavirus pandemic, distributors find themselves in similarly dire straits. Some are desperately trying to stay afloat by breaking one cardinal rule: streaming new releases online.
For cinema complexes around the nation that have seen a precipitous drop in customers, distributors and cinema studios that have taken such measures have only added insult to injury as theaters struggle to survive until the day moviegoers can return.
"Our feeling was we had to find some way to deliver titles to our audience," said one employee at Kadokawa Corp., which handled production and distribution of "Fukushima 50," about the nuclear crisis at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and co-starring Koichi Sato and Ken Watanabe.