Nippon TV is heading to the Series Mania Forum (March 24-26) in Lille with two new scripted formats and, for the first time, its most senior executives for scripted series and global strategy – a sign of the Japanese broadcaster’s accelerating push into international markets.
The company, which is making its fifth consecutive appearance at the forum since 2021, will offer “The Right to Judge” (10 x 60′) and “Escape” (10 x 60′) to potential co-production and format partners.
Attending the forum for the first time will be Enari Shinji, head of studio strategy, who oversees the development and greenlighting of scripted series at Nippon TV, alongside Kobayashi Masanori, head of global strategy headquarters.
The flagship title at the Forum is “The Right to Judge,” a suspenseful thriller that aired on Nippon TV in 2025 and became the broadcaster’s highest-viewed drama series on its national VOD service, amassing over 44 million views. The premise turns on a class reunion gone dark: when former elementary school students gather two decades after graduation to open a time capsule, they find evidence that someone has been nursing a grudge against the bullies of their cohort – and that person has begun exacting revenge. The killings are patterned on childhood drawings the victims made years earlier, lending the murders an eerie, premeditated quality. At the center of the investigation is the man who led the bullying, now forced into an unlikely partnership with a journalist he once victimized. The narrative moves between two time periods – the characters’ school days and the present – gradually peeling back the history that set the murders in motion.
Also making its international debut at the Forum is “Escape,” which takes a different tonal register – part thriller, part road story, part romance. The central figure is a young woman raised in the rarefied, controlling world of a pharmaceutical dynasty who finds herself kidnapped on the eve of her 20th birthday. Rather than seek rescue, she opts to stay on the run with her abductor, driven in part by a preternatural gift: she can sense people’s emotional states as colors through physical contact, and what she perceives in her father frightens her far more than life as a fugitive. As the pair evade pursuit, their dynamic shifts from adversarial to something more complex, while long-buried secrets about the young woman’s past begin to surface.
“Nippon TV has a proven track record of bringing dynamic stories to global audiences through scripted formats and co-productions. Building on the success of award-winning titles like ‘Mother,’ we are proud to introduce the new formats, ‘The Right to Judge’ and ‘Escape,’” said Enari.
Kobayashi added: “We look forward to exploring new opportunities to grow our scripted series internationally. Series Mania Forum is the perfect venue to engage with top industry players and foster new global partnerships.”
