Legal tussles with Warner Bros over The Matrix Resurrections have led to production company Village Roadshow filing for bankruptcy.
Here’s some sobering news this morning that comes courtesy of Variety: Village Roadshow has filed for bankruptcy in the United States.
The long-time partner of Warner Bros has co-produced and co-financed some incredible films, beginning in 1999 with The Matrix and spanning some 90 titles including 2019’s Joker and 2023’s Wonka. The long-running partnership between the two companies broke down in the wake of the global pandemic when Warner Bros elected to place its entire 2021 slate onto its Max streaming platform.
The move didn’t just anger directors such as Denis Villeneuve and Christopher Nolan (the move led to Nolan’s departure from the studio) but also Warner Bros’ business partners. Legendary Entertainment reportedly mooted a permanent split from Warner Bros, while Village Roadshow ended up taking its disagreement with the studio to the courtroom.
That would prove to be a costly decision. Three years on, the legal dispute is said to have totted up an $18m bill for Village Roadshow thus far. Should the eventual decision not go its way, there would also presumably be some kind of fee at the end too, which it looks like the production company simply can’t afford. As such, it has filed for bankruptcy and issued the following statement:
“The WB arbitration has caused the company to incur more than $18,000,000 in legal fees, nearly all of which remain unpaid, and presents the threat of a potential arbitration award that could flatten the company’s balance sheet, but that is not the full extent of its impact.
Even if the WB arbitration is resolved, the company believes that it has irreparably decimated the working relationship between WB and the company, which has been the most lucrative nexus for the company’s historic success in the entertainment industry.”
So there you have it. Even if things were to be resolved in Village Roadshow’s favour, it doesn’t much look like the folks there are keen to go back into business with a company who seemingly put self-interest ahead of a long-standing relationship which had yielded more than 90 films over several decades. Not a pretty story, really, and with the potential demise of Village Roadshow, we have another dubious honour to place at the gates of Warner Bros, a studio which has collected far too many of these rather shameful charges in the last few years.
Perhaps there might yet be a way for Village Roadshow to be saved, but the official end of such a fruitful partnership with Warner Bros marks a sad day for movies.
