ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Crunchyroll Senior Vice President of Global Commerce Mitchel Berger about the film Spy x Family: Code White and the platform‘s upcoming slate. The movie is set to release in theaters on Friday, April 19.
“He’s a spy. She’s an assassin. Together, Loid and Yor keep their double lives to themselves while pretending to be the perfect family,” reads the film‘s synopsis. “However, their adopted daughter Anya, a telepath, knows both of their exciting secrets unbeknownst to them. While under the guise of taking his family on a weekend winter getaway, Loid’s attempt to make progress on his current mission Operation Strix proves difficult when Anya mistakenly gets involved and triggers events that threaten world peace!”
Tyler Treese: It’s really cool seeing anime have such a spotlight at big industry events like CinemaCon. Congrats on Spy x Family: Code White. I saw the film, and it was a lot of fun. There are good laughs, and there are big action set pieces that really differentiate it from just feeling like an extended episode of the TV show. What are you most excited about when it comes to this film launching soon to the audience and having it out there?
Mitchel Berger: I think for this one, I’m excited about two things: 1.) personally, I’m excited because both my daughter and my wife are fans of the show, so I’m looking forward to actually going to see it with both of them as a family, which will be cool. But in general, I do think that you hit on it with bringing something like this to the big screen. It feels cinematic, it feels bigger, it feels special with what they’ve been able to pull together. It’s such a great franchise, anyway. It’s really cool to see that come to life on the screen and see the scope and the scale of what they’re able to do. It’s just, like I said, it’s great to see anime getting focused on, and this film is going to be a really good way to expose a lot of people to it that may not be anime fans. I think it’s very accessible to non-anime fans, as well.
Even if you’re not really familiar with the anime, it gets you up to speed really well. There’s that nice synergy with Crunchyroll, having the series streaming as well. That has to be a huge advantage, to funnel them in but also get people that enjoy the movie that will go straight to Crunchyroll and check out the series as well.
We hope so. It’s a virtuous circle where I think it’s great to be able to know who fans of the series are, tell them about the film, let them know what’s coming out there, and then, like you said, as we create new fans and expose new people, it’s great for them to come back in because we have a lot of stuff once you get in. If you’re a fan of Spy x Family, we have a lot of ways that you can go in the ecosystem and a lot of amazing stories and content. I love bringing new anime fans in. It’s great to grow that community in any way we can.
We’ve seen anime growing tremendously. Crunchyroll’s at CinemaCon, and we’ve seen society fully embrace anime, especially with streaming. How do you feel the reaction is within the film industry still? Because I remember when Demon Slayer: Mugen Train came out and there was like a dismissal of, “Oh, this is a weird occurrence.” People were slow on the uptake. How has that been on a professional level, navigating people brushing away anime at times, even though we see it not just on Crunchyroll but on Netflix and Max as well.
It’s been a fun journey. I mean, we started about 10 years ago as Funimation Films, at the time. And then we’ve come together, Funimation and Crunchyroll now. I feel like it’s very analogous sometimes to what it’s like to be an actual anime fan where you’ve got this thing that you know is super cool that you love and all you want to do is share it with people. And you’re trying to get people, like, “Hey, have you tried this thing out? Watch this show. Come try this out.” It’s that kind of labor of love that it’s been a little of that as we’ve grown this business, you know? We’ve had some amazing partners and we’ve been very well supported and it’s great to see people seeing that and seeing what’s happening and getting on board. I mean, I said today when we talked to the group at CinemaCon, anime is not coming. Anime is already here, and I think everyone’s catching up to the cultural impact that it’s having on the world. And I think that’s only going to grow. It’s just going to get bigger from here on out.
I wanted to ask about Spy x Family launching with subtitled versions and dubbed versions. How important has it been having both options for the audience? Obviously, there’s diehards that want the Japanese voices, but it’s also very convenient to have the dub, plus Crunchyroll and Funimation in the past have always had such a great dubbing history.
It’s a very passionate fanbase on both sides, although there are folks in the middle who love both. But yeah, it’s different voice acting. It’s a totally different experience. What I love about it, and I think what’s great for us is we are here to enable that fandom for the fans themselves. Having both subs and dubs allows us to say, “Look, we’re not going to choose for you. It doesn’t matter to us how you want to consume it. It doesn’t matter if you like subs or if you like dubs. What we want you to do is love this title and enjoy this content.”
So having both and being able to fulfill all those fans needs, I think, is the best of both worlds. I think it has been great for fandom and great for anime because everyone has a place in that community. Whether you like subbed or dubbed, you’re still enjoying the same story, the same characters, and the same heart. And I like the fact that we’re able to enable that and let both sub and dub camps, as it were, come in and enjoy the title together. That’s the way it should be. Dogs and cats living together, perfect harmony.
It also gives people like me an excuse to see it twice.
We love that. Thank you and keep doing it, because it is. It’s a totally different experience. It’s very different. The voice acting gives you a different flavor both ways, and I think it’s cool to watch those and contrast them and see the different localized flavors that you get from sub versus dub. So yeah, keep coming to both. We appreciate that.
There were some exciting CinemaCon announcements recently. You announced some of the upcoming slate with a Blue Lock movie, Haikyu!!, and Overlord all getting films. How exciting is it to build on these successful franchises which are already streaming on Crunchyroll and being able to bring these to theaters?
It’s great for us. I think, like you said, these are all based on existing franchises. So we’ve got source material, we’ve got a fanbase, we’ve got stories. What I love about this is that there’s just something different about watching something on the big screen in a theater — in the dark with all your friends, big screen, big sound, all that. It’s, it’s an experience you can’t get at home. And I love the fact that we’re able to take these stories and tell that story on the bigger canvas and put it widescreen on a cinema screen and have that amazing, earth-shaking, bone-rattling sound. Because, again, it’s an experience.
If you talk to anime fans, one of the biggest things they love is the community. They love going to conventions. They love getting together. And I think sharing that viewing experience in the theater is something special that you just can’t duplicate. So I love the fact that we’re able to take these beloved franchises like Blue Lock and Haikyu!! and Overlord and give them something extra — bring them to the theater and give people those experiences to share with their friends.
One thing that’s been interesting to see is those episodes of Demon Slayer getting a theatrical release ahead of an upcoming season. They’re not movies, they’re just episodes of the anime, but it’s a fun little bonus. You get to see it before it premieres. How has it been working on those types of titles versus the movies?
It’s been great. It’s an interesting concept that’s pulled together on Demon Slayer that works incredibly well where you’ve got the closing out of the past season and a preview of the future season. What’s interesting to me — and we saw this on the very first one that we did because we’ve done two of these now — the thing that I got the most feedback from fans was they love being able to see the opening and closings on the big screen and hear the music in the theater like that. That was almost worth the price of admission, not even getting to the cool content and getting to see the episode, but again, it’s that you’ve got this thing that you love, that you’ve experienced in your home, and seeing it up there and hearing it, that song resonating in that auditorium — it’s a cool experience.
So that part of it has been great. I love the fact that we’re able to, again, expand out, give people a little taste of the upcoming season in theaters — something special, something that honors their fandom. So it’s been a wonderful ride on those very successful commercially, but even more successful I think from a fan perspective and sentiment-wise.
The most exciting releases are branches of these big franchises like One Piece and Jujutsu Kaisen and stuff like that. But we’ve also seen the more niche films come out, like The Quintessential Quintuplets had a movie. When you’re dealing with a film that’s a bit more hardcore in viewership, like Quintessential Quintuplets versus something like One Piece, how is it targeting that demographic versus something that has a wider cultural impact that more bleeds into the norm?
Right, it’s just a matter of focus in that we believe every franchise, every movie, every piece of content, has its fan base. And whether you are showing it on four screens, 4,000 screens or to two people or 3000 people, to that person that’s a fan of that content — it is everything to them in that moment. And that’s what we want to do. We want to be something, we want to be everything to that person — not just something to everyone.
So we may have fewer theaters, we may have a little less scale across those things, but what we try to do is make sure that we honor that fandom. Because those folks who love something like Quintessential Quintuplets, for example, they love it and they’re coming out. They want that experience. And it should be exactly the same experience as if you’re going out to see the biggest film we’ve ever released, whatever that happens to be. We focus on it. We have the benefits sometimes of, again, knowing those fanbases and we talk to them a lot on social media and throughout the month. But for us, it really is about honoring their fandom and making sure that if we’re going to do it, they have a great experience no matter how many screens we put it on. Because if you’re a fan of Quintessential Quintuplets, you love it and we love that and we want to help you express that.
We’ve also seen some original films and some critically acclaimed ones like Suzume. How was the experience of seeing that brought out into North America and getting the acclaim it did. How exciting was it to see that film get received in the manner that it did?
That that was one of the most fun things I think I had the privilege of doing last year. We were able to premiere it at the Berlin Film Festival. We took it all through Europe, we brought it to the United States, we released it around the globe. For me, on a personal level, I love that movie. I just think it’s a great film. My hot take is that I actually like that film better than I like Your Name. I thought it was a better film all in.
But for me, getting to travel with Makoto Shinkai and seeing how he interacted with fans, getting to see the reaction and the passion, getting to see his passion for this project, and hearing him talk about the process of pulling it together and the story that he had been trying to tell for years and years and years and to finally able to tell that is very, very gratifying. For me, it was just a lot of fun. It was one of those things where I got to see it early. I loved it, I was passionate about it and I was aching to share it with people and just say, “Look, you’ve got to see this.” So it was great fun and I was glad to see him get the recognition he deserves. And again, just a phenomenal film.
