Geneon in turmoil after deal with ADV Films is canceled

Paul

Paul

Ghost of Animes
Administrator
Back in August, <a href="http://www.animeuknews.net/news/1482/adv-films-score-us-distribution-deal-with-geneon">we reported news</a> 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 <a href="http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-09-20/adv-films-geneon-entertainment-distribution-deal-cancelled">recent report on Anime News Network</a>, 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.
 
This does seem really bad news. Apart from the personal disappointment of 'Black Lagoon – The Second Barrage' maybe never getting released, will this eventually mean another kick in the balls for MVM?

I hope someone is forthcoming with some concrete details of this situation soon.
 
It'll be an indirect kick in the balls for MVM. It wont affect how they get their series licenced, but it'll reduce the number of anime that have an english dub available.

The thing we have to remember, is none of this is official yet. We don't know that Geneon will disapear. We don't know that they wont disapear, either. Until we hear officially, all we are doing is speculating.
 
A worst case scenario (and something that is a genuine worry for several US "industry experts") is that Geneon are liquidated, giving ADV, Bandai, FUNimation and Viz less competition for potential licenses. Looking at it logically, this directly impacts on MVM's UK movements, given more anime will end up with ADV and Revelation by virtue of their direct connections to parent companies and Geneon's lack of presence.
 
Sorry Fudce but I'm gonna speculate away.

If it does come to Geneon being liquidated, what does that mean for their recent back catalogue and current titles? Would these titles be unavailable to be picked up by any other companies? Mainly I’m worried about Black Lagoon.
 
harkins said:
Sorry Fudce but I'm gonna speculate away.

If it does come to Geneon being liquidated, what does that mean for their recent back catalogue and current titles? Would these titles be unavailable to be picked up by any other companies? Mainly I’m worried about Black Lagoon.
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I've been reading the ANN forum thread on this topic, best answer to that question I've found is this:

jsevakis said:
Dargonxtc said:
But the big question is, as psycho put it: If Geneon goes belly up rather quickly what is the most likely thing that will happen to the licenses they own? Particulally shows that are new or in current mid-stream release? Anyone with intimate knowledge of the anime industry who wishes to gives his or her opinions on this question would be greatly appreciated.
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What will PROBABLY happen, and has happened to a much smaller extent in the past, is that the Japanese rights holders will negotiate with Geneon/Dentsu so that any money owed will be waived or greatly reduced, the rights will be returned, and possibly product will be destroyed instead of liquidated.

Beyond that, the particulars will have to be arranged on a case-by-case basis. For the titles that are Geneon Japan-produced titles, they will probably attempt to find a new licensor. However, I don't know what's going on at Geneon Japan while all of this is happening.
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Personally I'm finding it all scary reading, especially considering the potential knock on effects to the entire western anime industry.

One post that opened my eyes a bit was again from jsevakis, the ANN Director of New Media:

jsevakis said:
psycho 101 said:
So how is the {Anime} business not healthy right now?
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No, it's not healthy and hasn't been since at least the Musicland bankruptcy in 2005, which signaled the end of the bubble of the US anime market. Licensing frenzies and over-speculation in the market lead to huge licensing fees, a flooded market, and burnt out consumers who could no longer afford to buy everything, much of which was crap they didn't want anyway. Fansubs, piracy, lack of mainstream-worthy titles, younger fans with less money, a general stagnation in the DVD market and many other factors contributed to the problem.

Since, things have snowballed. Whether this is the result of poor business decisions or not, it's where we are today. There are still some hits, but according to the various reports I've read, absolutely nothing moves like it did in the 90's and early 2000's. (In one interview, Carl Macek, formerly of Streamline, noted that todays' average anime release does about 10% of the sales he got in the VHS days. I think that's an exaggeration, but not by much.) Many titles today move less than 3000 copies, which is not even enough to make back dubbing expenses. Some sell less than 1000. A few, less than 500.

The anime companies have been adapting to the changing environment, with limited success. Some companies have done better at it than others.

I think there is still a lot of money in this market. There are more anime fans than ever before, but it would seem the legal release is becoming irrelevant. The trick is how to make it important again. That is the challenge before the industry.
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I agree with Fudge that its still way too early to speculate on what's happening, but it's got the hairs on the back of my neck standing up...
 
Ah, and two additional important posts from tempest, the ANN Editor in Chief:
tempest said:
DemonEyesLeo said:
I want to know what this means for Geneon's future releases. I need my Hellsing Ultimate and When They Cry.
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Seriously, no one knows. I don't think the people at Geneon even know. Dentsu wants out of the North American anime market and is looking to turn Geneon into a licensing firm like Kadokawa USA or like Shopro USA before it was merged with Viz.

Right now Geneon doesn't have the staff to market, or sell it's titles. So I'm sure they're looking for a new partner to replace ADV but if the problems that killed the ADV deal persist, perhaps no one will want to deal with them.

I apologize for not including the explanation of why the deal was killed, but I only have one anonymous source for that, and that, and while I believe that source knows what they're talking about, a single anonymous source is never enough.
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tempest said:
DemonEyesLeo said:
I'm pretty sure the previous articles stated that its just the sales/distribution that ADV was taking over. Not production. I think Geneon will still continue to produce products, they just need to find a way to distribute them now. Shows in the works are still in the works, we just might see release delays until they get it all solved. Definitely not good news, but I woudln't have a heart attack just yet.
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You're right, the previous articles only mentioned sales & marketing. Production was a detail that hadn't leaked to the public yet. While we know that Geneon wants to end their production, we didn't know how they were going to handle it in the future and were trying to get that information before publicizing it. But given these new developments, we decided to include that information in this article.

Dentsu plans on laying off all of Geneon's production staff before the end of the year.

These plans may however need to change now, I don't know.
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Which is the info that Paul rather nicely summed up in the first post :)
Apologies to quote so much from another boards thread, but these are pretty big unconfirmed bits of info floating around, and I think they are quite important.
Signs are a fairly big case of restructuring of one of the oldest running US distros. Hopefully this will all end as a best case scenario and the anime trade will come out a lot stronger because of it, but from what I'm hearing a fair amount of well informed people in the trade are quite worked up over this.
 
Argh! I like Geneon! I also like ADV! It's like you're the 6 year-old kid that may be sent to an orphanage because the parents had a divorce and none of them wanted you! :(

Hmm, I do hope that Geneon dont go belly up. I dont want a lack of quality anime just because of poor business moves (in my view as a fan) from both companies. I thought they worked well together, so ADV wuld have no reason to break ties with them. But for Geneon to be solely dependant of another company just meant this current insecure problem to possibly occur.

I wish them luck.
 
I've just bugged Tony over at MVM regarding this, asking if the state of Geneon was a cause for concern for him.

He has confirmed that the current troubles Geneon are facing "should not effect licensing in any way", and it is "all just about distribution in the US."

This is certainly good news for anyone concerned about the problems affecting us here in the UK, and personally I think it's a good indication that it's more a case of restructuring Geneon rather than them going out of business.

Here's fingers crossed it all gets resolved quickly and in the best possible way.

(oh, and p.s. yeah, I'm collecting 8 Geneon series at the mo, I'd really like to see them all complete ;) )
 
What incredibly bad news to come home to. :?

I'm going to be optimistic here. As Geneon is in my opinion one of the best US distributors, they aren't going to give up the ghost just yet..
I'm not sure on how this worked, but I heard Geneon distributed titles for Viz and Bandai at one point - so it may just be a case of another company doing the same for Geneon - for the short-term at least.

I hadn't known about Dentsu's plan to kill Geneon until now, which comes as quite a shock. I'm guessing that Geneon just isn't making Dentsu enough money to be worth investing in anymore, or something around those lines; which would make sense as the d-rights (Mitsubishi) divestment a few weeks ago would support.

So I've just contradicted myself there, but I'm just going to stay optimistic, even if Dentsu want to kill Geneon. Maybe another company will come along - with some super new business plan - and buy Dentsu out of Geneon. I can only hope a press release is posted soon, this is too much to bare.

My first thoughts were that ADV might have killed the distribution deal on purpose, to get rid of opposition. But I'm certain that isn't the case as there would be contracts involved.

EDIT: In fact, with the end of Geneon's releases from their soundtrack division earlier this year, that should have been a sign at things weren't right - I had always wondered about that, and now it makes sense.
 
Aslong as they bring out the Tenchi Collections and Black Lagoon/Ergo Proxy here then i'll be happy. Hopefully this matter will be resolved fairly soon and swiftly.
 
Nyu said:
Aslong as they bring out the Tenchi Collections and Black Lagoon/Ergo Proxy here then i'll be happy. Hopefully this matter will be resolved fairly soon and swiftly.
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Ergo Proxy is already being distributed in the UK by MVM so there is no issue at all with that. Black Lagoon maybe a no-go (it has been available for quite a while I would presume and no-one has bothered to pick it up yet). Tenchi is spread around FUNimation and Geneon and MVM have part of that and Revelation have others. So far as other parts of the Tenchi franchise outside of GXP and Ryo-ohki there is little chance (and GXP is delayed indefinitely for the UK).
 
Just discussing this on IRC.

Along with all the other possible future disasters of the destruction of releasing many current Geneon titles.

That 2 billion Yen fund for the international promotion of Guardian of the Sacred Spirit is something to be watched to see what happens there. It was obviously going to be one of Geneon's big 2008 series, but what if Geneon goes under... Surely there must be a contingency plan for all these possible things that could go wrong...

I'm dying for more information, literally.
*begins to keel over*
 
Ok I don't really like Geneon. But at the same time I don't want to see them go bust. Simply becuase there is so much stuff from them I want and need to get and if they go out of buissness God knows what will happen. Then again in the long in run if all the stuff by Geneon does get re liscensed by FUNImation and other companies then we could be looking at a lot of potentail DVDs. Not that all of Geneon's releases would help the UK Industry >_> (Like Girls Bravo the anime)
 
I really should think this over properly before I post, but my final mind set on this now is that Geneon is going to become a licensing company (as mentioned on lots of places), like Kadokawa, and make deals with other distributors to release their titles.
I think this is a shame because for me, Geneon have always done some of the best releases for things, and I've been really looking forward to seeing what they're planning to do with their licensed series; but I guess now it'll be down to the likes of Funimation and ADV to produce the English version of these series, so there are a lot of bad things with that, ADV doing the same old artbox releases with no original designs, and Funimation - with some really fantastic artbox designs, but bad encoding and a general lack of care for the quality of the video/audio (see Gunslinger Girl).
I'd go as far as to say I'm 100% sure that this is what will be the case by early 2008, and starting now distribution wise. There will be a lag time on all their current releases.
If something else happens to what I've said - I'd be pretty surprised.

EDIT:
Sakimori said:
Ok I don't really like Geneon.
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What is the reasoning behind this?
 
Well, now I've had a bit of time to get over the initial shock of the news and talk to a few people on it, I'm beginning to think there may not be so much to worry about it. None of the UK distros seem phased by it at all, Andrew @ Beez has certainly assured me it's nothing to worry about.

From all the information and posts I've read so far it just seems like Dentsu is restructuring Geneon to be the same setup as Kadokawa Video, i.e. they handle the licencing but all production and marketing is subcontracted to others.
On the plus side this strategy allows the big money pockets of the Japanese backing companies to bring over some interesting titles that we probably never would have seen over in the west otherwise, but on the negative side it reduces the creative production pool in the west and we start ending up with the same dub voices for all the anime.
Looks like we just have to wait and see who Geneon find to be their new marketing force in the west and hope it doesn't cause too much disruption to the current disribution dates in the meantime.
 
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