Was passierte wirklich mit PM Entertainment?

B Movie Experte G. Conley ist gerade dabei ein Buch über PM Entertainment zu verfassen. In dem Zusammenhang hat er mal etwas über den Ausklang einer der besten Direct To Video Firmen geschrieben. Und wie schon häufiger erwähnt, haben Joseph Merhi und Richard Pepin die Firma verkauft. Erst danach ging alles den Bach runter. Pepin/Merhi sind nicht Pleite gegangen! Das hatte auch schon u.a. Gary Daniels in seinem Interview bei Blade Runner erzählt, aber im Netz findet man dauernd Leute die etwas anderes behaupten(sie beziehen sich immer auf Pepin/Merhi). Ein sehr interessanter Bericht wie ich finde und wenn Conley irgendwann tatsächlich das Buch veröffentlichen sollte, bin ich der 1. der zuschlägt:)

My writings about PM Entertainment on this website have been limited. As such, I have a lot of information in my head from the research I’ve conducted that I’m going to slowly report as time goes on.

One of the questions I’ve had e-mailed to me about PM is what exactly happened to the company? One day they were producing and distributing action movies with some of the best car chases and explosions on the market and by that time next year they had disappeared off the face of the earth.

In April of 2000 the Pepin-Merhi (PM) Entertainment Group was sold to the Harvey Entertainment Company. Older comic book fans may remember the name Harvey Comics. They introduced the characters Casper, the Friendly Ghost and Richie Rich to the American landscape in comic form in the 50s and 60s. As time went along things dried up in the comic business, the owners retired, and the company was eventually sold off to a new entity that christened themselves Harvey Entertainment Company. After exploiting the comic properties for some years the company decided to acquire another property. The property they chose was PM Entertainment. The selling price? A cool $10 million — 6.5 million in cash and 3.5 million in stock, in a deal that included their library of more than 140 films and a couple syndicated TV shows.

Harvey bought out all three owners of PM, Joseph Merhi, Richard Pepin, and George Shamieh. Joseph Merhi and Richard Pepin had started the company together, thus the PM, in or around 1989 after splitting from producer Ronald Gilchrist’s City Lights company. Not long after the company’s inception Shamieh assumed ownership of a small portion of the company’s stock and headed up their international sales division. When Harvey bought out PM, Merhi and Pepin left to pursue other opportunities. Shamieh stayed on, continuing to run international sales, which had become more and more important in the 90s and into the new millennium due to the U.S. home video market not being as inviting of PM’s specialty product as it once was. Harvey Entertainment changed PM’s name to Sunland Studios. PM’s core workforce was kept on and was told that things would progress as normal. They did for a short while, but not for long. According to Paul Volk, who was synonymous with PM over the years as a jack of all trades in the company, he was let go by Sunland just days after Shamieh and the company ended their relationship. As he was being fired he was reportedly told, “Consider yourself lucky because you have a head start to get another job.” Not long after much of the workforce was let go.

Three years after buying the company Harvey Entertainment sold off PM Entertainment for another $6 million to the Film Library Acquisition Corporation (FLAC). Around the same time period FLAC bought the CineTel Films (976-EVIL, Militia) library. By the time the sale was complete FLAC had changed their name to Echo Bridge Home Entertainment. Echo Bridge has distributed a lot of catalogue product since then, although for whatever reason only around 15 movies from the PM library have been released. At the very least the films have been given swank new box art, including

Riot and Sword of Honor. It has also meant some films have gotten absurd box redesigns like Angel in the City, which sadly is not about a curvy young girl in leather trampling over Los Angeles and causing cars to explode. Hope you enjoyed this small piece of PM history.

Quelle: G.Conley am 22.04.2008