October 5th, 2009 
townhawk 
The situation for TV stations in Japan seems get more serious season after season. Dropping advertising revenues and a rapidly declining number of viewers force them to reduce the costs at all ends and doramas are no exception.
You might have already noticed that this upcoming fall season there are going to be a a couple more sequels than usual with doramas such as “Liar Game 2″, “Sono Otoko, Fuku-Shocho 3″ or “Koshonin 2″. The magazine Shukan Josei now reports that we will continue to see this trend towards sequels of popular older doramas instead of putting a lot of money into new projects and the new sets that would come with them throughout the next seasons.
The most surprising sequel that is already expected to start in January is “Code Blue 2″ starring Yamashita Tomohisa. It’s still just a rumor, but there are a lot of sources telling the same information. If this holds to be true, then we would see one of the fastest sequels. After all the original “Code Blue” only aired about 1 year ago. Another trend is to save costs by producing movies based on doramas or the other way around. This upcoming season we have “Real Clothes” as a nice example, but next year we are also going to see a 2nd movie based on the “Koshonin” series and the first one of the “Liar Game” series.
Of course, we still have original projects such as “Tokyo DOGS” starring Oguri Shun, but don’t be surprised to find out that Fuji TV actually saved a lot of money on this one as well. Apparently they are going to put a lot of money into Oguri’s directorial debut that’s going to release next year and in return he had(!) to appear in their Monday-09pm dorama slot, hoping that he could boost up their ratings again. Whether he even had to do it for less money is not known, but it wouldn’t be that surprising anymore. Of course Fuji TV is denying those rumors, “We’ve never heard anything about such a deal. We have a high opinion in the dorama’s content and in Oguri’s abilities as an actor.”
Okay so what can we look forward to in 2010? It seems like there will be a lot of sequels, at least if you believe those rumors floating around the backs of those major TV stations. By the way, it’s not just Fuji TV and their “Code Blue” rumor. A “Bloody Monday 2″ starring Miura Haruma in 2010 seems to be pretty much a done deal for TBS, too. Another of those really fast sequels. Both of them have been nice doramas with good ratings, so can you really blame the TV stations for playing safe?
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