Subsidiary | |
Industry | Entertainment (Anime) |
Founded | 1991 |
Headquarters | Los Angeles, California |
Key people
|
Andy Frain, Chris Blackwell, Marvin Gleicher, Laurence Guinness, Mike Preece, Kaoru Mfaume, Jerome Mazandarani |
Products | Anime theatrical and direct marketing and production, see list of titles |
Parent |
Lionsgate Home Entertainment (Lionsgate through their media operating unit Starz Media) |
Website | www.manga.com |
Manga Entertainment is a producer, licensee, and distributor of Japanese animation in the United States and United Kingdom, owned by Lions Gate Entertainment. It also co-produces several anime series, including Ghost in the Shell, Street Fighter Alpha: The Animation, Highlander: The Search for Vengeance and Eon Kid, usually through financial contributions toward production costs. It was established in 1991 by Andy Frain, who was the Managing Director of Island World Communications; a subsidiary at the time of Chris Blackwell and John Heyman's Island World Group. It has also played a part in dubbing anime, when it is not sub-licensing a production that has already been licensed by another company (e.g., Akira, licensed and redubbed by Geneon in 2001, Bounty Dog, and Lupin III: Bye Bye Liberty Crisis). It is also the designated home video distributor for the Pokémon franchise in the UK, including some of the movies (among them Pokémon: The First Movie).
They have licensing and distribution deals with Funimation, Sentai Filmworks and Viz Media in the UK, however unlike previous licensing agreements they do not bring titles from Funimation, Sentai, and Viz to Australia under their brand as Manga's Australian distributor, Madman Entertainment has the licenses from these companies.
Manga Entertainment, especially Manga UK, has had a special relationship with Madman Entertainment since Madman's founding in 1996. Manga is credited by many as the major force behind turning Anime into mainstream entertainment in Australia during the 1990s and early 2000s. Manga's latest DVD & Blu-ray masters are encoded and provided by Madman Entertainment because of Madman's extremely large and modern DVD & Blu-ray authoring division.