So the big news in the otakusphere is that Funi just nabbed 30 titles formerly belonging to ADV, which pretty much guts their catalogue.
Mixed in with the occasional fanboyism over at ANN is some very interesting speculation, which I’ll condense here:
1. Was the Soljitz (sp?) deal a trick to gut ADV all along?
2. How is Funi going to get all this stuff to the market without sitting on licenses for years?
3. Funi’s deal will impact CN, by shrinking the pool of available titles for them to show; or Funi will butcher the titles they make available to CN (take your pick).
4. The R1 market is becoming a monopoly, oh noes!
5. Funi’s making the same mistake as ADV, piling up too many licenses; they’ll become over-extended.
#1 sounds a bit too paranoid.
#2 might be valid, depending on how much work Funi decides to do. It appears that ADV doesn’t even have the right to distribute stock on hand any more which is a HUGE blow, and probably will finish them, if they didn’t get a pretty penny back. This also means that ADV has already done all the work; all Funi needs to do is reprint the box covers (or slap stickers over them) and send the DVD’s back out. It just depends on whether or not they want ADV’s logo to show up when the disk is loaded. If it were me, I’d go the sticker and insert route; every case would have a small slip of paper inserted explaining the change, and why the logo still says ADV. Said insert would include self-serving message about how Funi rescued the show from oblivion “for the fans” and give lip service thanking ADV for their excellent work in preparing the show for the R1 market. Rub it in. Yes, I’m an evil bastard, thank you. The alternative would be to spend years re-mastering and re-producing all 30 titles. If that’s the case, Funi will make ADV’s rep for sitting on licenses look like customer-friendliness incarnate.
#3 Damnfino.
#4 Not yet, but it’s getting there. I expect there will be one less company after this; my thinking is ADV may have 1 chance in 30 of surviving. Fire sale on all assets and divisions that they can to raise some cash, then start picking up the cheapest possible titles.
#5. Depends on #2, but I think Funi has MUCH deeper pockets than ADV.
Update: It’s not certain whether there’s still a heartbeat, but apparently higher brain functions have not ceased:
Greenfield wasn’t ready to talk about ADV’s current situation, but did acknowledge that the company’s separation from their partnership with Sojitz left recent titles with their “fate undetermined.†He also expressed his wishes that whichever company ends up distributing the titles will hire the same voice cast to continue the production of the episodes.
Although Greenfield didn’t think that ADV would be announcing any new acquisitions this weekend, he mentioned that they were in negotiations for 23 titles. No information was given as to when they might be revealed.
Whistling past the graveyard, or a sign of life? The furniture auction indicates they seem to be on the strategy I suggested.
According to the ex-ADV commenter on chizumatic, the furniture auction was for PiQ’s stuff, so they might still have hope.
Yeah, same thing was said at AnimeXpo by Greenfield. (corrected name)
It’s a sad thing, ADV’s apparant passing. Easily half my collection is made up of ADV titles. I am happy to see that Kanon ’06 was picked up, and hopefully they’ll release DVD 6 soon.
And NOT a thinpak. If that happens, The Librarian’s library will get a donation… and I’ll get grumpy, fast.
Yep. See my post tomorrow regarding the order that this news caused.
Your scenario for #2 wouldn’t work, as all of the translation, subtitles, dub, packaging design, and DVD authoring is ADV’s IP. I suppose they could sell the rights to Funimation (not like it does ADV much good to retain them if they no longer hold the licenses to the series), but otherwise, Funimation will have to start production from scratch.
As for the existing product stock, I’m sure its fate is explicitly spelled out in the Termination and IP provisions of the contract(s) between ADV and ARM Corporation/Sojitz. Since a single DVD contains the IP of multiple Parties which can’t be separated and physically returned to its Owner, my guess is that the existing stock would have to be destroyed.
Well, as it happens, the news indicates that Funi is in negotiation with ADV for a lot of that. I see no reason why ADV wouldn’t want to sell it; as you say it’s useless to them and it’s an asset they can sell to raise more cash. As for the stock that’s in the retail warehouses, nope that is good; if you mean “burned but not shipped yet” then it’s probable that you’re right.
It still wouldn’t matter, because it’s doable if people want to make it happen. Given that Funi’s hand would be fairly strong in terms of pre-arranging just such transfer of IP, it probably went down like this: “Look, either you sign off on the transfer or it’s no deal. You’re talking about anime it took ADV nearly a year to prep, and we’ve got all our own stuff plus Geneon’s to put on the street. If we have to go back and re-do all this, it’ll take a year or more and that will cost us market position and sales, not to mention the expense of re-mastering.”
I would assume from last months “production problems”, ADV did not want to be overextended; so if they weren’t able to ship the DVD’s by whatever “final date” resulted from the Sojitz divorce, they just held the masters and stopped production.