Nippon Herald Films

Kadokawa Pictures Inc.

Kadokawa Pictures Logo used since 2002.
Former type	Private
Industry	Film
Fate	Merged
Predecessor	1942: Dai Nippon Film Co., Ltd. 1974: Daiei Film Co., Ltd. 1983: Daiei Studios Inc., Ltd. 2002: Kadokawa Daiei Film Co., Ltd.
Successor	Kadokawa Shoten
Founded	January 4, 2007 (2007-01-04)
Defunct	January 1, 2011 (2011-01-01)
Headquarters	1-8-19 Fujimi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8078
Area served	Japan, Worldwide
Key people	Kadokawa Tsuguhiko (Chairman) Shinichiro Inoue (President and CEO)
Products	Motion pictures
Total equity	250 million yen
Website	kadokawa-pictures.jp

Kadokawa Pictures (角川映画, Kadokawa Eiga^?), formerly Kadokawa Pictures Inc. (角川映画株式会社, Kadokawa Eiga Kabushiki-gaisha^?) is the film division of Japanese company Kadokawa Corporation.

In 1945, Genyoshi Kadokawa established Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Co., focusing on the publishing business.

In 1975, Kadokawa's president, Haruki Kadokawa decided to venture into the film business, launching the film division of Kadokawa Shoten, Kadokawa Pictures was born. His goal was to try to reap synergy benefits by creating film adaptations of the publishing house's most popular books and marketing them simultaneously. The company's first film was the 1976 release The Inugamis, directed by Kon Ichikawa and adopted from a Kadokawa Shoten published novel written by Seishi Yokomizo. Due to an aggressive marketing campaign, the film ended as the second-largest earner of the year in Japan.

Between 1976 and 1993, Kadokawa produced close to 60 films. The company's pictures were usually large-scale epics with sizable budgets and matching advertising campaigns, aimed for mass audiences and box-office success. While critics weren't always kind on Kadokawa's works, the films were consistently popular among the viewing public. By 1992, 7 out of top 20 all-time highest box-office grossing Japanese films were Kadokawa's productions. During his time at Kadokawa Shoten, Haruki Kadokawa was often hailed as the savior of Japan's struggling film industry. Kadokawa's efforts to branch into foreign markets were consistently less successful. Its biggest failure came in 1992 when the 25 million US$ film Ruby Cairo starring Andie MacDowell failed to find a distributor in the United States. Haruki Kadokawa was forced to resign from Kadokawa Shoten after being arrested for smuggling cocaine. The new president was Haruki's younger brother Tsuguhiko, who had previously been forced out of the company in favor of Haruki's son Taro.