Hulu hoops Hulu Japan celebrated its seventh anniver- sary in September, with the clock ticking on the premiere its ﬁ rst Russian drama, zombie series The Day After, and still basking in the halo effect of original show Miss Sherlock, which was the platform’s ﬁ rst international co-production. Employee number one, chief content ofﬁ cer and board member Kazufumi Nagasawa, talks about hunting down titles from untapped catalogues to follow Austra- lia’s Wentworth, Turkey’s Magniﬁ cent Centu- ry and Spain’s Locked Up, the advantages of joint rights acquisition, and how he’s dealing with the looming challenge of rivals such as Amazon Prime Video. Hulu Japan premiered its ﬁ rst Russian series, zombie drama, The Day After, on 5 October, broadening its SVOD offering, introducing a new approach to sub- licensing and windowing, and paving the way for a broader selection of foreign acquisitions. What is chief content ofﬁ cer, Kazufumi Nagasawa, up to with the zombies? The simple answer is pro- gramme diversity. The more complex answer is feel- ing his way through an evolving environment with different genres and a wider range of partnerships. “Japan has so many OTT services, including of course the global platforms. Most of the programmes watched on those OTT platforms are either local, American or Korean, and some Chinese. That’s it. 99% or even 99.9% of viewing is from those four ter- ritories. What I want to do is give diversity, show con- tent to our users that they cannot watch if we do not exist,” he says. Sub-licensing deals around The Day After maximise every window and then some. The Day After premiere on Hulu Japan was fol- lowed on 6 October by a ﬁ rst-episode special win- dow on the country’s top commercial broadcaster, Nippon TV, which bought Hulu Japan in 2014. AVOD platform TVer, jointly owned by ﬁ ve Japanese terres- trial networks, has one-week catch-up rights. Sister Nippon satellite network, BS Nippon, will begin airing Picture by Shawn Ha the series on 10 November 2018. Hulu Japan, which 30 contentasia issue ﬁ ve, october 2018