The End of Geneon USA?
Last month Geneon Entertainment announced a deal with rival anime dubbing company ADV to take over their distribution side of the company. At the time no one was exactly sure what this meant for the fate of Geneon. At best it meant ADV would just sell their DVDs now. At worst it meant that Geneon would no longer take part in any dubbing of their new series, & instead would be done in-house by the ADV voice actors (instead of the California & Ocean Group VAs that Geneon usually uses). Well now things have gotten a lot clearer, & a lot worse for Geneon.
This week it was announced that the deal between Geneon & ADV is now off, with both sides saying they had to pull out. The thing is Geneon had already begun it's transition, leaving it in a bad position. Geneon USA had already laid-off all their sales people. It has also now been revealed that their parent company Dentsu Inc had planned to cease all in-house production & dubbing by the company by the end of the year, when ADV's deal was supposed to begin. Of course now things have gotten more complicated. They're now trying to find a new another company to take ADV's place, but it's unknown if they'll succeed.
In addition, Dentsu has confirmed that starting October 1, Geneon will "focus mainly on management of its works portfolio." Meaning that they'll now only license titles, but hand over the translating, dubbing, & marketing to other companies (like how Kadokawa licensed Haruhi, FMP: TSR, & The Third but gave the dubbing to Bandai, Funimation, & Right Stuf respectively). This spells trouble for all currently running Geneon titles. Some of their biggest titles right now, like Hellsing Ultimate, Higurashi, & Black Lagoon, won't finish being dubbed & released in America before the end of the year. At best, all of these titles will suffer delays in being released. At worst, their dubs & releases in America will cease altogether. Considering Geneon is one of the biggest & oldest dubbing companies in existence, this is dark times indeed for the English anime world.
Source: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-09-21/dentsu-adv-films-confirm-withdrawal-of-geneon-deal