Posts Tagged ‘Monster 9’

American Ninja Warrior 4 is Alive! It’s Alive!

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

After months of uncertainty concerning the future of American Ninja Warrior in light of the bankruptcy proceedings of the Japanese company Monster 9 which owns the rights to Ninja Warrior, apparently the powers-that-be are beginning preparations for the next American Ninja Warrior to be produced (American Ninja Warrior 4). Competitors from the last season of American Ninja Warrior (myself and my buddy Ron included) were contacted in the last couple of days by Smith & Co., the casting agency for American Ninja Warrior, in order to tell us to start getting our submission videos ready for American Ninja Warrior 4 later this year. No additional information was provided, like if this 100% means there will be another Sasuke/Ninja Warrior in Japan, or when any event will actually happen. They said they will contact everybody again in a few weeks with more details, but the fact that they are bothering to call past competitors to make certain that they are getting a jump-start on preparing their submission videos can only be seen as a very positive sign about the likelihood that another American Ninja Warrior will actually happen (although it is not a guarantee, of course).

This year a new casting company is handling American Ninja Warrior, and they are well aware of how badly the previous casting company handled their competitor pool, and it appears they are working hard to be more professional and considerate this year (last year many submission videos were lost and they only notified us 3 weeks before the competition that we had been accepted to compete). The new casting company seemed genuinely enthusiastic about working on American Ninja Warrior, and we’re happy to have them!

Rumor also has it that NBC will be more involved than ever, so there is a possibility that more of ANW will be shown on NBC beyond the final stage in Sasuke Japan. No details here…but anything that further promotes ANW and increases the possibility that it will live a long healthy life is welcome!

Click LIKE or re-tweet if you are happy to hear that news that there will be another American Ninja Warrior in the future! Yippee!

Ninja Warrior (Sasuke) Dead?

Tuesday, November 15th, 2011

It appears that the Japanese company Monster 9, which owns the rights to Ninja Warrior, has filed for bankruptcy. Here’s a great breakdown on Rambling Rican about what’s going on, but it would seem that the most probable outcome is that we’ve seen our last Ninja Warrior (*sniff*). With Ninja Warrior getting such weak ratings in Japan over the last events I doubt anybody is leaping at the chance to buy the brand and intellectual property and produce it themselves. There is a chance, albeit a small one, that NBC might be interested in buying the brand to create a standalone American Ninja Warrior property for the US market, although losing the end story of competing at the near-impossible Mt Midoriyama in Japan for the finalists I’d think is a negative from the storyline perspective. Who knows? This is all conjecture, aside from the fact that Monster 9 has indeed filed for bankruptcy. I’ll post information as I find it.