Dragon Ball Z Kai Set for U.S. Premiere

NEW YORK: 4Kids Entertainment has licensed the U.S. broadcast rights for the new animated series Dragon Ball Z Kai, which will debut in TheCW4Kids Saturday morning programming block in the 2010-11 season.

Dragon Ball is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Akira Toriyama. As part of the series’ 20th anniversary celebration in 2009, a project that was overseen by Toriyama, Shueisha and Toei Animation remastered the Dragon Ball Z series in high definition, re-edited the show, updated its opening and ending sequences, rerecorded the vocal tracks by most of the original cast, and launched the newly named Dragon Ball Kai on Japanese TV in April 2009.

“Dragon Ball is one of the most popular manga series of the past 20 years, with more than 150 million copies of the book series sold in Japan and North America,” said Alfred R. Kahn, the chairman and CEO of 4Kids Entertainment. “We are looking forward to including Dragon Ball Z Kai as a mainstay in our TheCW4Kids 2010–2011 Saturday morning programming lineup and making this great series available on American broadcast television.”

“We are excited about working with 4Kids to expose this major title to a new generation with a completely updated version,” said Gen Fukunaga, the president and CEO of FUNimation Entertainment.