Geneon in turmoil after deal with ADV Films is canceled
Paul •
Back in August, we reported news that ADV Films had signed a US distribution deal with Geneon; meaning that while Geneon would still license and produce anime is the US, all of their future sales, marketing and distribution would go through ADV Films. As a result of this move, Geneon closed the same departments of its own business, in the process making dozens of jobs redundant.
Yet according to a recent report on Anime News Network, ADV Films and Geneon have now canceled this deal, essentially leaving the Geneon catalog (which includes a number of popular anime series like Hellsing, Last Exile and Trigun) with little to no means of sales, marketing and distribution. No reasons for the break were revealed, but ANN also point out that their Japanese parent company Dentsu Inc. (who own Geneon) were planning to wind up Geneon’s “in-house production” at the close of 2007.
Without the benefit of further information (which, no doubt, will be forthcoming), this report sees one of the North America’s biggest and oldest anime publishers in a dire situation and potentially close to exiting the US anime industry altogether. What this means for Geneon’s current and future anime DVD releases and by extension, their various UK releases too, remains to be seen.
