Studio Ghibli’s films will continue to be shown on Nippon TV’s Friday Roadshow block rather than being made available on Japanese streaming services, Nippon TV president and CEO Hiroyuki Fukuda said on May 25.
Fukuda answered shareholder concerns directly, saying the company and the studio “will continue to prioritize broadcasting films on the terrestrial TV slot ‘Friday Roadshow,’ just as we have done in the past.” He added that both parties want to “preserve the specialness of Ghibli’s films appearing on broadcast TV through our Friday Roadshow program,” and that they are aware of requests and opinions regarding streaming and “intend to continue discussing moving forward.”
The practical effect is immediate for viewers in Japan: the only legal ways to watch Studio Ghibli films domestically remain Nippon TV broadcasts or purchasing DVDs. Internationally the catalog is widely streamed—HBO Max continues to offer the Ghibli lineup outside Japan and Netflix previously held rights—but those options do not apply at home. The Netflix agreement has expired, and only one Ghibli-produced film has ever been made available for streaming within Japan—Grave of the Fireflies—which the studio itself did not control the rights to.
Friday Roadshow is Nippon TV’s long-running Friday night movie slot; Ghibli features there several times per year, with major titles like My Neighbor Totoro often reserved for summer and other vacation periods. Nippon TV acquired Studio Ghibli as a subsidiary in 2023, and the current arrangement keeps the studio’s most popular films tied to scheduled broadcast windows rather than to on-demand libraries.
The decision clashes with changing viewing habits and a clear friction point inside the distribution chain: Nippon TV owns Hulu in Japan, yet Fukuda said there are no plans to put Ghibli’s films online on Hulu Japan or any other domestic streaming service. That gap—ownership of a streaming platform without plans to use it for Ghibli’s catalog—has left younger viewers and those who prefer on-demand viewing with limited options as DVD and linear-TV audiences shrink.
For now, Nippon TV’s public position answers the immediate question—Ghibli films will not be streamed in Japan—and preserves the Friday Roadshow model as the studio’s primary domestic window. What remains open is whether that stance will change: company statements say the matter will stay under discussion, but they offered no timetable or concrete plan for moving films onto Japanese streaming platforms. Until those talks produce a new policy, Japanese viewers who want guaranteed access to Ghibli must rely on scheduled broadcasts or physical media rather than being able to stream the films on demand.
