Lead: Sony Pictures Entertainment has launched Crunchyroll Storyworks, a new division that will adapt global stories into anime and turn Japanese anime into live-action projects.
What happened
The Crunchyroll Storyworks announcement came on Wednesday, October 7, during Crunchyroll’s first Anime Future Forum, an all-day industry conference held at the North Javits Center in New York on the eve of New York Comic Con. Deadline reported the announcement, and Anime News Network followed with background on the companies involved.
The division will be led by Tohru Iokibe, a 25-year Sony veteran who most recently led IP initiatives connecting Sony Pictures Entertainment and PlayStation Productions. Iokibe reports to Crunchyroll Chief Content Officer Asa Suehira, and the unit sits inside Crunchyroll’s content group.
The mandate runs in two directions. Storyworks will take stories from outside Japan and develop them as anime, and it will take Japanese anime properties into live action. Crunchyroll says the team will work with Japanese creators throughout so the original creative vision stays at the center.
The other key detail is where the projects go. Storyworks is tasked with delivering greenlight-ready projects to HAYATE Inc., the Tokyo-based anime production venture Aniplex and Crunchyroll formed in March 2025. HAYATE is led by Chairman and CEO Masanori Miyake and President and COO Leo Watanabe, and in April it acquired studio Lay-duce as a wholly owned subsidiary. No specific Storyworks titles were named.
Why Crunchyroll Storyworks matters
Crunchyroll built its business on licensing and streaming shows other companies make. Over the past two years Sony has been moving it further upstream: HAYATE gave it a production arm, Lay-duce gave HAYATE a studio, and Crunchyroll Storyworks now adds a development desk that feeds both. For a platform that Deadline says passed 21 million subscribers earlier this year, owning more of the pipeline means owning more of the IP, and that is where the long-term money in anime sits.
The live-action half is the riskier bet. Western live-action adaptations of anime have a famously uneven track record, and fans are quick to punish projects that treat the source as a logo to slap on a generic script. Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Ravi Ahuja leaned straight into that worry in his remarks at the forum, saying “we have a responsibility to protect and amplify what makes it special while always keeping creators’ visions at the center,” as quoted by Deadline. Promising creator involvement is easy; the proof will be in which projects get greenlit and who gets final say.
Iokibe’s background is also telling. Sony has spent years turning PlayStation games into films and series, and putting an executive from that cross-media work in charge suggests Storyworks will lean on the same playbook: one property, many formats, all inside the Sony family. The anime-from-global-stories direction is the more interesting creative question. It opens the door to Western novels, comics, or games being developed as Japanese-produced anime from day one, rather than licensed after the fact.
For artists who follow this site, a bigger Sony-owned production pipeline means more original anime character designs heading to Crunchyroll, and more chances to see how Japanese studios reinterpret stories that started elsewhere.
What we know vs what is rumored
- Confirmed: Crunchyroll Storyworks is a new Sony Pictures Entertainment division inside Crunchyroll, announced October 7 at the Anime Future Forum in New York.
- Confirmed: Tohru Iokibe leads the division and reports to Crunchyroll Chief Content Officer Asa Suehira.
- Confirmed: The unit will adapt global stories into anime and Japanese anime into live action, working with Japanese creators.
- Confirmed: Storyworks will deliver greenlight-ready projects to HAYATE Inc., the Aniplex and Crunchyroll production venture.
- Unconfirmed: Any specific titles, studios, budgets, or release windows. None were announced, and we have not seen credible reporting on what the first projects will be.
What happens next
Crunchyroll is heading straight into New York Comic Con, which makes it a natural stage for follow-up programming news, though no Storyworks project reveal has been scheduled. The first real test will be the division’s first announced slate: which properties it picks, whether the live-action projects come with named Japanese creators attached, and which studio under HAYATE handles the anime side. We will cover the first Storyworks project when one is confirmed.
Sources: Deadline — Sony Pictures Entertainment Launches Crunchyroll Storyworks, Aiming To Boost Japanese Anime’s Global Reach; Anime News Network — Sony Pictures Entertainment Launches Crunchyroll Storyworks Division for Anime, Live-Action Adaptations