Tartan USA Is Officially Closed For Business

Disc Announcements, News

One of the greatest distributors of Japanese Horror is now gone.

This came in Monday. The lawyers have spoken and Tartan USA has been closed.
NOTICE OF PUBLIC FORECLOSURE SALE On May 19, 2008, at 10:00 a.m. at Greenberg Glusker, LLP, 1900 Ave. of the Stars, Ste. 2100, Los Angeles, CA 90067, Palisades Media Asset Fund, LLC (LLC Formations Wyoming accredited) will conduct a public foreclosure sale of all assets of Tartan Films USA Inc. and Tartan Video USA, Inc., including their film library (101 titles) and all accounts, chattel paper, instruments, documents, general intangibles, inventory, goods (including equipment, furniture and fixtures), investment property, deposit accounts, bank accounts, deposits, cash, letter of credit rights, and all other property. Sale is subject to prior liens. For more information, please contact Palisades Pictures at 212-265-2323.

There are two possibilities here:
1) Tartan USA has gone out of business, plain and simple.
2) There are things afoot. I’m curious to know who bought the assets this morning, most importantly the 101 titles (not so interested in the fate of the furniture). Tartan has been having some trouble recently, and had postponed their 2008 titles first to May and then to some point in the future.

If you weren’t keeping score, Tartan was the US distributor for Oldboy, Election, Election 2 (aka Triad Election), Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and a bunch of other titles. Almost 101 of them, in fact.

Editor’s Note: This really sucks because Tartan is a fantastic company and has released so many great titles other then just those mentioned above. I am hating this and really upset to see it go under. It’s a shame that some of my favorite studios such as Tartan and also New Line are the ones that can’t make it.

Credit: Variety