According to a press release today by their parent company:

TROY, Mich., Nov. 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Handleman Company (NYSE: HDL), www.handleman.com , today announced results for its second quarter of fiscal year 2004, which ended November 1, 2003. In addition, the Company also announced that it has reached a tentative agreement to sell Anchor Bay Entertainment, a wholly owned subsidiary. The closing is expected to take place in the next 60 days. As a result, all periods presented in this press release reflect the classification of Anchor Bay's financial results as discontinued operations.

http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir...item_id=473251

Ugh...I just checked their links and they've removed their "Coming Attractions" listings. Please, oh please do not let this affect the upcoming Dawn of the Dead...

I expect a short delay.

I wonder will the Anchor Bay name be dropped? It's a name that resonates with some fanboys.

Sign of the upcoming armageddon!


I hope this does not effect the quality of the great releases that AB does. Yes, I'm an AB fanboy...

Coming soon - Army of Darkness: Under New Management Edition

ugh. I am one of those anchor bay fanboys. This is quite distressing.

Anchor Bay Entertainment

The Company has entered into a tentative agreement to sell Anchor Bay Entertainment. The terms of the sale have not been disclosed, and the sale is subject to certain closing conditions.

So, the most important question is... Sold to whom?

This sucks big time. I have a few friends that work at AB that live just a few streets away. I'll talk with them at work tomorrow morning. Man oh man I hope this doesn't effect the DoD release.

oo, great... another delay for Dawn of the Dead

Goodtimes Home Video

Their "In The Future" page has been down for a couple of months now...

DJ

I heard this was coming for awhile now.

Hopefully the new owners will know their niche, and cater to it well.

Can't wait for the new re-issues of the same old thing.

Perhaps they're merging with Lions Gate, like Artisan did. Makes sense; it'd create an incredibly large home video company with a library equaling the smaller studios.



YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED

Blue Underground? Just my guess.

Also appears AB was not making money for Handleman:

Anchor Bay had been putting drag on the company’s overall financial performance, which was hurt when Kmart went bankrupt and shuttered 300 stores. Handleman had serviced those stores and noted in its second-quarter financial report that loss of those stores and another regional mass merchant client had hurt its results.

This ties in with what Bill Lustig said in that interview he gave to DVD Maniacs. He cited his knowledge that the Handelman Company intended to sell or shutdown Anchor Bay by the end of 2003 as the reason that he left to found Blue Underground. Apparantly, he was right.

I hope the long-overdue anamorphic SE of Time Bandits is still on.

That's sad to hear. I hope the new management doesn't spell the end of the kind of films AB released. Many awesome titles wouldn't have seen the light of day as early without them.

Considering that the press release uses phrases like "tentative agreement " and "contemplated sale" <small>(twice, for the latter)</small>, I'd say the subject of this thread is a bit premature.

I doubt Bill Lustig is sitting on $60 million to shell out for Anchor Bay. I don't know what the point would be either, since all Anchor Bay has that he doesn't are licenses, and it'd be cheaper for him to bide his time and acquire the most coveted licenses individually, or to take that monstrous sum and direct it towards other licenses entirely.

There's more to Anchor Bay than their genre releases. That's what they're best known for, but from what I understand, their children's releases and exercise videos were much more profitable. There was a time when I couldn't go more than a couple of weeks without buying an Anchor Bay DVD, but I'm pretty sure I haven't bought a single one all year. <small>(Admittedly, I would have if I hadn't received a review copy of Dawn of the Dead, but even then, that's still a far cry.)</small> I think Near Dark was my last Anchor Bay purchase.

I think the whole thing bodes ill for DOTD:SuperBox .

Since several of the proposed parts of it are as yet unlicensed....

That is how all company acquisitions are first announced. Another common wording is "have reached an agreement in principle". AFAIK, there are certain announcements that must be made at certain intervals to begin the due dilligence process and keep the feds happy before anything has become official.

Same here. The Herzog/Kinski box and Near Dark were my last AB purchases. I have most of their genre releases before that though.

Well, wasn't Lustig the president of AB?! Pretty easy to know where the company is headed when you are responsible for the outcome.

As long as we get the DOTD set, I'll be happy.