It appears that Dentsu has sold control of most of it’s Geneon division in Japan to Universal Pictures Japan. Universal Pictures Japan is obviously the Japanese branch of Universal Pictures, which is the movie making and distribution arm of NBC Universal.
What is happening, as far as I can tell, is that Geneon is merging with Universal Pictures Japan to create a new company, which UPJ’s parent, Universal Pictures International Entertainmnent, will own a 80% stake in. All of this is supposed to take place in February.
Now, I should stress a couple things here. First, this is Universal’s foreign branch buying a foreign company. What does that mean for what’s left of Geneon’s US branch? I don’t know (wouldn’t it be odd for a US company’s foreign branch to then…sell products back to the US? I’m guessing that’s not a unique situation, but just seems odd).
Second, the primary motivation for this appears to be that Geneon is the distribution for Universal Pictures Japan’s media, so this move has more to do with UPJ wanting to combine their production/licensing with their distribution and not necessarily has anything to do with anime (remember, Geneon Japan does a lot more than just anime).
It would be nice if this meant that Geneon USA got rebooted, but I wouldn’t necessarily get my hopes up about that until you actually hear something, especially given the economy.
