Rumor: Tartan UK to close

Kaiju Shakedown: Variety's Asian film blog

Jun 27 2008

Just heard from someone in the UK that everyone showed up for work at Tartan UK this morning only to be told that the company was closed.

Only a few years ago Tartan was one of Europe's biggest buyers of Asian films.

Speculation over what happened is simmering along - who knows, it could all be a rumor - but from what I've heard they were having the same problems as Tartan US with mounting debts and mounting cash flow problems and finally something had to give.

Sorry, we are to being

closed now.

Waiting for more confirmation and details as they come in, but if anyone else knows anything feel free to email me (grady at subway cinema . com) or post a comment here. You can even post comments anonymously. Yay, internets! But not so "Yay" if you worked for Tartan. A lot of good people worked at both Tartan US and UK and for them to be suddenly out of work just stinks.

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Comments (6) add comment

Grady Hendrix: ...

Not rumor, fact. Getting more confirmations now and will have more info by the end of the day.

June 27, 2008

Paul: Shame

It's a sad day.

June 27, 2008

Max Miller: ...

I think like a lot of people my age Tartan was instrumental in my initial exposure to contemporary asian cinema. Even though they emphasized the whole "Asian-Extreme" genre-type they still had an overall positive impact.

June 28, 2008

Grady Hendrix: ...

It's official. Tartan UK has closed its doors. World Cinema Ltd, which it co-owned and which distributed Tartan UK titles as well as several other lines will remain unaffected and continue trucking along with no hiccups.

Tartan US, on the other hand, has sold its library to Palisades Media Corp. which has created a unit especially designed to get Tartan titles back out on the marketplace. More details in this story:

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/12586

June 28, 2008

kevin: ...

not to be "that guy" but you gotta wonder how bad torrents are hurting the niche sales-wise. 23,000 peers on a popular asian movie tracker as a type this and yet distributors can't sell a few thousand copies of the same titles? i call shenanigans (on myself, too).

June 28, 2008

Rhythm-X: ...

I've been burned so many times buying Region 1 DVDs of Asian films only to find that they're either sub-par, or just plain worthless for one reason or another. If companies don't want people downloading stuff, maybe they ought to sell a better product instead of one that's frequently INFERIOR to what's on the internet free for the taking. I could rant for pages about this, but I'll boil it down to "why should I pay you for something that's not as good as a bootleg from the internet?". Which is all too often the case.

July 01, 2008

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