AMC Network is now adding Sentai Filmworks and Hidive to its stable. As Variety points out, Sentai and its Hidive streaming service will join AMC’s current lineup, alongside BBC America, IFC, SundanceTV, WE tv, and IFC Films. By 2025, AMC hopes to reach as many as 25 million paid subscribers through all its streaming services.
Besides Hidive, Sentai’s properties also include Sentai Studios, Anime Network, and SentaiFilmworks.com. Sentai also has a huge anime catalog that includes K-On!, Clannad, Food Wars!, Girls and Panzer, and High School of the Dead. Sentai is also doing an HD remaster of Nana.
“With strong industry relationships and access to key content creators in Japan, Sentai distributes and curates one of the anime industry’s most diverse libraries of top trending and classic titles, with its content available on Crunchyroll, Hulu and Amazon Prime, among others,” said AMC in an official statement.
“We are thrilled by AMC Networks’ acquisition and are excited to be a part of their growth strategy,” said Sentai co-founder John Ledford. “This acquisition will not change Sentai’s mission to deliver the most exciting anime content to audiences around the world—it will expand it greatly and will give our content businesses more distribution, more partnerships, more scale and more reach. I could not be more pleased.”
AMC is just the latest to make sizable moves in the anime streaming and distribution space. Last August, Sony took full ownership of the popular anime streaming platform Crunchyroll, paying out over a billion dollars. This move brought Crunchyroll and Funimation under the same corporate umbrella.
Hidive always seemed to stream only a few shows each season, so hopefully AMC’s purchase will change that and beef up the platform.
Think we’ll get a Walking Dead anime out of this?