Disney+ is making moves to boost its output of live-action originals from Japan, a longstanding ambition for the company’s Asia-Pacific content team that has been given greater urgency as the House of Mouse works to grow its streaming business worldwide.
The company unveiled a multi-year development deal on Tuesday with Tokyo-based production company The Seven, one of Netflix’s most frequent partners on Japanese-language films and series. Disney described the deal as a “long-term, ongoing content development collaboration.” The duration of the pact was not disclosed, nor were financial details.
“Since the launch of Disney+ in Japan, general entertainment and local originals have become an increasingly important part of our content offering, making this collaboration a natural evolution in accelerating our content investment,” said Carol Choi, Disney’s executive vp of original content strategy in APAC. “It builds on the strong relationships we’ve developed over time and represents a meaningful step forward in deepening our storytelling roots in Japan,” she added.
Under the framework, Disney’s content team will be embedded at the earliest stages of project development, working alongside The Seven’s producers to shape Japanese-language series exclusively for Disney+. The deal represents a notable shift for the platform in Japan, where it has typically acquired or co-produced titles on a project-by-project basis rather than locking in dedicated development partners.
The Seven was established in late 2021 as a subsidiary of TBS Holdings (Tokyo Broadcasting System Holdings), one of Japan’s major commercial broadcasters, with an initial investment of ¥30 billion (then approximately $205 million). Led by president and CEO Katsuaki Setoguchi and vice president and chief content officer Akira Morii, the company has become one of the country’s most prolific producers of live-action originals for the global streaming market. Its highest-profile credits have come through a five-year strategic partnership with Netflix, signed in 2022. Morii and his team produced the hit dystopian survival series Alice in Borderland and manga adaptation Yu Yu Hakusho, among other titles. The Seven also produced the upcoming jidaigeki series, Song of the Samurai, which was recently scooped up by HBO for release in May, and it has a co-development deal with Hollywood producer David Permut (Hacksaw Ridge, Face/Off) for film projects straddling the U.S.-Japan market.
The Disney deal positions The Seven as the rare Japanese production house with partnerships at two of the world’s dominant streamers — a reflection of how scarce experienced live-action producers with global ambition remain in Japan’s once stagnant but now fast-changing production landscape.
The agreement also comes at a moment of accelerating competition for Japanese content. Japan’s premium streaming sector grew 15 percent in 2025 to hit revenues of $7.2 billion, according to a recent report from Media Partners Asia (MPA). The country is estimated to be the world’s third-biggest premium streaming market by revenue, behind the U.S. and China (the latter of which does not permit foreign platform operators). According to MPA’s estimates in February, Netflix leads the Japanese market with a 22 percent share of premium VOD revenue, while Amazon Prime Video holds the largest subscriber base at 19.3 million (although the company’s flagship e-commerce offering is a major draw in Japan). Disney+ currently trails both significantly, commanding just 3 percent of total viewing hours, though it recently expanded its footprint through a joint bundle with Hulu Japan.
Simultaneously, global appetite for Japanese-themed content has surged in recent years. Anime has long been a youth-culture juggernaut, but live-action Japanese storytelling has also begun to break through in a major way — as witnessed with Disney’s own Shōgun, the samurai epic that swept the 2024 Emmys with a record-setting 18 wins, including best drama series. Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said last year that Japanese titles on the platform have been viewed for a cumulative 25 billion hours, making them the second-most-watched form of non-English content globally, behind only Korean.
“I am confident that by unleashing the refined creativity of The Seven through Disney’s extensive network and expertise, we can evolve Japanese stories into the ‘next craze’ that people truly fall in love with,” said Katsuaki Setoguchi, CEO of The Seven.
Added Gaku Narita, Disney’s executive director of content production in Japan: “For our local production team, the focus is on developing stories that audiences will want to come back to again and again. This deal allows us to work closely with creators in Japan from the earliest stages of development, shaping projects that reflect local creativity while meeting the high bar of storytelling that Disney+ is committed to telling.”
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