It's a company that has long been in trouble, having not released anything in at least the last year, and prior to that its only money-maker was yaoi-- until BL licensor Libre, who had taken over after Japan's primary BL publisher Biblos went under, declared nearly all of CPM's yaoi licenses invalid because they hadn't been renegotiated.
I've watched the increasing disappearance of CPM with sadness for a long time, particularly because probably half of the people I know in the anime industry owe their start to or have otherwise worked for Central Park Media at one point or another, and the company was really one of the earliest pioneers of anime in North America.
CPM has filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 7, which means that the company will be completely liquidated, rather than Chapters 11 or 13, which allows the company to restructure and continue trying to operate.
So it is with great sadness that I bid farewell to Central Park Media. I hope you'll join me in remembering the good times (oh, La Blue Girl!) and setting aside the not-so-good times. Those of ye who have shared of CPM's bounty, please offer an anecdote (perhaps a favorite title?).
That said, I wonder if I could score the rights to La Blue Girl...
As I asked in my blog post, I wonder how many CMP titles FUNi is going to end up saving.
I still have Chiralty that they published quite some time ago. It reminds me of when manga was at its infancy in the States and how it was published in American standard comic book format! I have to admit that the print quality was crap yet I do consider the series a gem since the yuri genre is under-appreciated in the West. I wish I would see more Maka Maka-esque mangas.
Ruby: I read Chirality! It came in a grab-bag my BFF got when we were like...14 or 15. ^_^;
One good that might come out of this is that Funimation might pick up the right to Revolutionary Girl Utena.
Meanwhile, I would very much like to see the Patlabor TV/OVAs, Now and Then, Here and There and Lodoss Wars saved from certain doom.
Of course, I'm not sure how feasible that could be. Since I'm not a privy to the contracts they held with Japanese licensors and distributors (obvs), I have no idea if anything CPM released was even technically still theirs at the time of the chapter filing; most of their titles could've reverted back to the original Japanese licensors. Would that mean Bandai Visual would be the one R1 companies would have to talk to about a second Patlabor release?
My head will a splode.
As far as who has the rights to what at the time of the filing - I attempted to contact them to find out the status of several licenses for the site I write for by telephone and E-Mail and got no response (no response from E-Mail messages and could only get a busy signal over the phone), so I have no idea what the status of their licenses were prior to the bankruptcy, or even what the license terms were.