Vivendi Entertainment picks up the rights to Tartan/ Palisades film catalogue

by Chris MaGee

It's been a year since Tartan USA and UK went out of business putting the fate the DVD releases of such films as "Tetsuo the Iron Man", "The Hidden Blade", and "Vital" up in the air. In July '08 it seemed like there was a glimmer of hope on the horizon when New York-based securitization and P&A financing company Palisades Media picked up Tartan's 400 film catalogue, but not much new news has popped up on the actual release of the defunct DVDs since then. Now Andrew Mack at Twitch has what appears to be word of some tiny bit of movement in the whole mess, movement that will hopefully (hopefully being the operative word) see these films have a permanent home for the foreseeable future.

Hollywood-based Vivendi Entertainment, a company that "provides producers and independent studios a full array of distribution services including: theatrical releasing, home entertainment, digital delivery and television sales" have picked up the U.S. home video, digital and mobile rights to the full Tartan/ Palisades catalogue. And that's it. No word yet on when these films will see new releases, or if they will be made available online. It does appear that Palisades did their part as a middle man and most likely made a decent amount of money on buying low and selling high (or higher), but now that Vivendi has their hands on a fine line-up of art house and Asian films it still remains unclear as to what they'll do with them. I guess we have to be grateful for baby steps...