Picturehouse, WIP.

"Picturehouse and Warner Independent Pictures are closing, it was announced today by Alan Horn, president & COO of Warner Bros."

Variety has the story; Anne Thompson has the press release.

Comments: Brian Brooks, Matt Dentler, Karina Longworth and Scott Macaulay.

Updated through 5/13.

Updates, 5/9: "The tragedy was in plain sight, but nobody thought it would hit this hard," writes Eric Kohn in indieWIRE. "Of the 43 employees at Picturehouse's New York-based headquarters, many will remain involved with the larger company through September to handle Picturehouse's three upcoming releases: The Women, Kit Kittredge and Mongol. A Warner Independent spokesperson declined to comment on its employees' plans, but while the demise was less expected, it was ultimately also less a cause for communal outcry. Although Warner Independent president Polly Cohen came from a studio background with the company, arriving to the independent distribution business from the oustide in, much beloved Picturehouse president Bob Berney landed there after playing an incessantly consequential role in the field for many years."

"[A]s I wrote in depth when Paramount Classics was being disassembled, both company's suffered greatly by the limitations put on them by the lack of vision shown by the corporations funding them," writes David Poland. "So neither company was allowed to fly... but neither ever found a focus the way Sony Classics has either."

"More than 70 jobs will be eliminated," notes the Los Angeles Times' Rachel Abramowitz; she talks with Horn and Berney.

The bottom line for Salon's Andrew O'Hehir: "Time Warner has reached a top-level executive decision to back away from making or distributing adult-oriented, art-house films."

"[W]hat's increasingly clear is the particular model of the specialty biz - the idea of a dedicated unit for a certian type/budget of film which both lives within and operates parallel to a studio - is undergoing a radical transformation, if not an imminent contraction," writes the Hollywood Reporter's Steven Zeitchik.

"I think it's a bone being thrown to the critics of this move that the WB isn't 'getting out of the indie film biz but stressed that it will still acquire and produce specialty pics,' but we all know that that'll last about as long as the first major campaign fails to make said specialty film have a $10 million opening weekend (and I'm being conservative)," writes Film Threat's Mark Bell.

Update, 5/13: "The real reason Warner is anesthetizing its specialty divisions is because it has never understood the specialty business," argues Patrick Goldstein in the LAT.

Posted by dwhudson at May 8, 2008 10:55 AM