Japan is continuing with its incentive program for overseas projects, which has supported the likes of The Smashing Machine, and is enhancing the offer for 2026.
The Visual Industry Promotion Organization (VIPO) and the Japan Film Commission have announced the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) will update the scheme, including the introduction of multi-year subsidies.
Productions will be given greater flexibility to report expenses, loosening the previously rigid timeline system. Under the previous system, a one-year production could only claim on expenses incurred during the Japanese fiscal year. The new one allows the costs to span up to two years.
METI noted that previously, a one-year project in the current fiscal year had to from March 27, 2025, to January 31, 2026 to qualify.
The new-look incentive is planned to launch in late spring 2026, per the Japanese Film Commission. Guidance around applications will follow at a later date.
Since its launch in 2023, the program has supported 18 projects – notably aiding Dwayne Johnson’s turn as UFC Mark Kerr in The Smashing Machine. Filming on the pic, which landed director Benny Safdie the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, took place in Japan.
Others supported include the Brendan Fraser-starring U.S.-Japan co-pro Rental Family, which is about an American actor in Japan who joins a ‘rental family agency,’ and Season 2 of Apple TV’s French-Japanese thriller series Drops of God, which is set in the world of fine wines and stars Fleur Geffrier and Tomohisa Yamashita as rivals competing to inherit a vast wine collection.
METI operates the program, with VIPO its operator and the Japan Film Commission the coordinator.
