Village Roadshow Leisure Group, the film manufacturing firm behind franchises equivalent to The Matrix, the Joker and Ocean’s has filed for bankruptcy safety within the US, in keeping with a submitting with a Delaware court docket.
The agency has blamed its monetary troubles on a authorized battle with its former accomplice Warner Bros (WB) and a “failed and expensive endeavour” into the manufacturing of impartial movies and tv sequence.
In a bid to mitigate a few of its monetary issues, Village Roadshow is proposing to promote its intensive film library for $365m (£281m).
The firm’s money owed are estimated to be between $500m and $1bn, in keeping with the court docket paperwork.
Village RoadShow and WB produced and co-owned dozens of movies through the years however their relationship soured in early 2022 after the discharge of the most recent Matrix film – The Matrix Resurrections – on the streaming platform HBO Max.
Village Roadshow alleged WB had shut it out of its rights to any sequels and prequels of the movies the 2 firms had beforehand labored on collectively.
“The WB arbitration has induced the corporate to incur greater than $18m in authorized charges, almost all of which stay unpaid”, chief restructuring officer Keith Maib stated in a court docket submitting.
That authorized battle, in keeping with Mr Maib, has “irreparably decimated the working relationship” between the 2 firms, finally ending “probably the most profitable nexus” for Village Roadshow’s historic success.
The different challenge confronted by Village Roadshow was a pricey studio enterprise launched in 2018. Not one of the movies or tv sequence independently produced as a part of that endeavour delivered any earnings.
Like different film firms within the US, Village Roadshow additionally struggled with a droop in demand from the pandemic and the disruption from the strike motion by Hollywood actors and writers, which began in Might 2023.
In December, the Writers Guild of America banned its members from working with Village Roadshow over the corporate’s alleged failure to pay its contributors.
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