Entertainment news website Deadline reported on Thursday that Viz Media and the Gotham Group have signed an agreement for the Gotham Group to develop film and television adaptations based on Viz Media‘s original properties, including titles from its Viz Originals graphic novels and the RWBY franchise that it had acquired.

The RWBY animated series has a 10th volume greenlit.

Viz Originals include Devil’s Candy by Rem & Bikkuri, Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, Lynx by Sam Sattin, and Galaxic Baseball League by Acky Bright.

The Gotham Group is a film and television production company that has produced such titles as The Spiderwick Chronicles, The Maze Runner, Stargirl, and Percy Jackson and the Olympians, among others.

In July 2024, Viz Media acquired the RWBY series following Rooster Teeth shutting down. Viz Media owns the rights for future distribution, production, licensing, and consumer products. The company stated at the time that it was exploring the production of new chapters in the series.

The original RWBY web animated series by the late creator Monty Oum follows four girls with unique weapons and powers who are training to hunt supernatural “Creatures of Grimm.” Rooster Teeth produced nine volumes and 117 episodes. The ninth volume began in February 2023 and ended in March 2024.

Shaft’s RWBY: Ice Queendom television anime for the RWBY franchise premiered in Japan in July 2022. Crunchyroll streamed the series as it aired in Japan, and it also streamed an English dub.

Viz has published manga for the RWBY franchise, including Shirow Miwa‘s adaptation of the web animated series in Shueisha‘s Ultra Jump magazine from November 2015 to February 2017. Viz Media published the manga in its English edition of Weekly Shonen Jump magazine beginning in October 2017, and also published the manga in print. The company also published Bunta Kinami‘s RWBY: The Official Manga manga. Kinami launched the manga in Shonen Jump+ in December 2018, and ended it in June 2020. Additionally, Viz Media published the RWBY manga anthology series.

Rooster Teeth (RWBY, gen:LOCK) revealed in March 2024 in a memo from general manager Jordan Levin to its staff that, after 21 years, it was shutting down “due to challenges facing digital media resulting from fundamental shifts in consumer behavior and monetization across platforms, advertising, and patronage.” Rooster Teeth had stated at the time that its parent company Warner Bros. Discovery would explore options for its IP such as RWBY and gen:LOCK.

Source: Deadline (Denise Petski)

Let’s have a look at what ANN readers consider the best (and worst) of the season,
based on the polls you can find in our Daily Streaming Reviews
and on the Your Score page with the latest simulcasts.

Keep in mind that these rankings are based on how people rated individual episodes of the current season, not on the overall quality or popularity of the series.
Only the titles legally streaming in North America and popular enough are being ranked, so the bottom of the list might represent ‘watchable’ rather than ‘bad’.
Series that lack enough user votes will not qualify for the ranking.
See the notes for further details.

Don’t forget to head over to Your Score to rate the episodes you’ve watched this week

Episode Rankings for the week of July 29-August 4

Along the actual ranking for this week’s episodes, this graph chronicles the change in position from week to week.
While some series are stable, others swing wildly in the rankings depending on the strength of each episode.
When a series has no episode for a given week, the previous week’s episode is used instead as a placeholder.
The first episode of each series is considered as part of the first week, even if it really streamed during the second week.
Click on the numbers to highlight a particular series.

Series Cumulative Ranking as of August 4

Each week’s ranking takes into account the scores given to previous weeks’ episodes.
As we reach closer to the end of the season, each series’ rank will start to solidify and we’ll get a look at the real winners and losers.
Click on the numbers to highlight a particular series.

Notes

Disclaimer: the rankings are just an average of opinions, published for entertainment and information purposes.
ANN makes no claims regarding statistical significance or invulnerability to spam.

The rankings are computed using the Ranked pairs method,
with the variation that unrated titles are considered as abstentions instead of lower than the rated titles.
This roughly means that if, out of all people who rated both A and B, 60% preferred A, it will be ranked higher than B.

The rankings indicate relative quality (A is preferred to B), not absolute quality (B is good/bad).
While the titles are ranked from ‘best’ to ‘worst’, sometimes the difference between #1 and #10 can be very thin.
So if your favorite is near the bottom of the list, don’t take it personally.
It doesn’t mean it’s a bad show, it just means that ANN readers, on average, have preferred the ones above.

If a series has no episode for a given week, we use the rating data for the previous week’s episode in order to compute the weekly ranking.
This is not officially counted as a position in the ranking (it has no impact on the cumulative ranking), but it makes it easier to compare weeks if they each have the same number of series ranked.

It should be noted that long-running series (and sequels) have an advantage in the sense that only people who like the series are still watching it, and they are likely to give each episode a high rating.
But if such a series is going through a low-quality filler arc, the season will get low rankings that are not indicative of the true overall quality of the series.
Conversely, there are fewer people rating the show so it’s less likely to have enough votes to qualify for the ranking.