Disney+ is taking steps to boost its output of live-action originals from Japan, a long-standing ambition for the company’s content team in the Asia-Pacific region that has been given greater prominence 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 popular partners for Japanese-language films and series. Disney described the deal as a “long-term, ongoing collaboration to develop content.” Neither the duration of the agreement nor the financial details were revealed.
“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 development in accelerating our content monetization,” said Carol Choi, Executive Vice President of Original Content Strategy at Disney Asia Pacific. “It builds on the strong relationships we have developed over time and represents a meaningful step forward in deepening our storytelling roots in Japan,” she added.
Under this framework, Disney’s content team will be integrated into the early stages of the project’s development, working alongside the producers of The Seven to form a Japanese-language series exclusively for Disney+. The deal marks 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 securing 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 broadcasting companies, with an initial investment of 30 billion yen (then about $205 million). Led by President and CEO Katsuaki Setoguchi and Vice President and Chief Content Officer Akira Mori, the company has become one of the country’s most prolific producers of original works for the global live streaming market. Her most notable credits came through a five-year strategic partnership with Netflix, signed in 2022. Mori and his team produced the hit survival series. Alice in Borderland A manga adaptation Yu Yu Hakushoamong other titles. The Seven also produced the upcoming jidaigeki series, Samurai songwhich was recently pitched by HBO for a May release, and has a co-development deal with Hollywood producer David Permut (Hacksaw Ridge, Flip/Stop) for film projects spread in the American-Japanese market.
The Disney deal positions The Seven as the rare Japanese production house to have partnerships with two of the world’s dominant streaming companies — a reflection of how rare experienced live event producers with global ambition are in Japan’s once stagnant but now rapidly changing production landscape.
The agreement also comes at a time when competition for Japanese content is accelerating. Japan’s premium live streaming sector grew by 15 percent in 2025 to reach $7.2 billion in revenue, according to a recent report from Media Partners Asia (MPA). The country is estimated to be the world’s third-largest premium streaming market in terms of revenue, after the US and China (which do not allow foreign platform operators). According to MPA estimates in February, Netflix leads the Japanese market with a 22% share of premium VOD revenue, while Amazon Prime Video has the largest subscriber base at 19.3 million (although the company’s leading e-commerce offerings are a big draw in Japan). Disney+ currently lags significantly behind both, accounting for just 3% of total viewing hours, though it recently expanded its reach through a joint bundle with Hulu Japan.
Meanwhile, the global appetite for Japanese-themed content has increased in recent years. Anime has long been a juggernaut in youth culture, but live-action Japanese storytelling is also starting to infiltrate it in a big way — as seen in Disney’s own films Shogunthe samurai saga that swept the 2024 Emmy Awards with a record 18 wins, including Outstanding Drama Series. Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said last year that Japanese titles on the platform were watched for a cumulative 25 billion hours, making it the second most watched form of non-English content globally, behind only Korean.
“I am confident that by unleashing the sublime creativity of The Seven through Disney’s extensive network and experience, we can develop Japanese stories into the ‘next craze’ that people will truly fall in love with,” said Katsuaki Setoguchi, CEO of The Seven.
Gaku Narita, executive director of content production at Disney in Japan, added: “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 early stages of development, shaping projects that reflect local creativity while meeting the high level of storytelling that Disney+ is committed to telling.”
