Anime

FUNimation ends licensing deal with Crunchyroll

ⓘThis article was published on October 18, 2018 and could contain information that has since changed or become out-of-date.
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FUNimation Entertainment's office in Flower Mound, Texas
FUNimation Entertainment’s office in Flower Mound, Texas

For the last two years, Funimation and Crunchyroll have shared a license agreement where Funimation-licensed titles would also appear on the Crunchyroll streaming service. As of today, October 18th, 2018, Funimation has ended that agreement in order to pursue their own streaming services under FunimationNow.

This change will see “several hundred new shows” appear on FunimationNow, with the loss of some titles; the titles shared with Crunchyroll would continue with some minor changes. My Hero Academia, Attack on Titan, Black Clover, Dragon Ball Z and One Piece are a few of the series shared between the two companies. A finalized list of affected titles was not provided.

An added casualty of this is Funimation leaving the VRV streaming service on November 9th, 2018.

Crunchyroll streams anime series in Japanese with subtitles, where as Funimation was involved with dubbing shows and films in English and handling physical distribution through DVD and Blu-ray.

Sony Pictures Television announced their acquisition of a 95% stake in Texas-based Funimation on July 31st, 2017.

AT&T acquired Crunchyroll’s parent company Otter Media on August 7th, 2018.

Sources: Funimation, Crunchyroll

 

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