Palisades pledges to remain extremely Extreme.

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By Alison Willmore on 07/31/2008

Filed under: Biz

Everyone's been eyeing Palisades Media since the company bought up the defunct Tartan's highly covetable UK and US film libraries and proclaimed they'd keep right on acquiring and distributing films (on DVD, with the possibility of occasional theatrical releases) in the Tartan tradition.

Why would a print and advertising financing firm get into indie film distribution right around the time that everyone else is fleeing the industry like it's a loft party that's out of liquor? It seems, mostly, because they were Tartan's major US creditor and foreclosed on their assets. Grady Hendrix at Kaiju Shakedown tries to get clarification from Palisades CEO Vin Roberti on the company's plans for the future. A few highlights:

Will you be keeping the Asian Extreme line?
Will we be keeping it? We're looking to grow it to a 2000 title library by 2010.

Are you worried about the state of the home video market? It's not doing well, it's glutted and too many companies are fighting over shelf space. Why get into this market now?

Home video sales are down 3.5% - personally I'd love it if the real estate market was only down by that much. We've got a 24-picture slate coming out that will be announced in the next week or two. But most importantly, at the end of the day there will be a change of the delivery system. Not this year, but in the next several years there will be a change in the delivery system. I don't mean people will stop buying DVDs or Blu-Ray or hard products but an additional system will come out and at some point it will become apparent to everyone that it actually works. It's coming. When that comes, whoever is sitting on quality titles will do extraordinarily well. We will be in that position in a way no one else can be in the Asian Extreme market and the European arthouse market. We will be in those markets better than anyone. Those are our two markets: Asia and European arthouse.

"[W]e want the consumer to get a quality product. And beyond that, who cares?" he finishes. Okay then.

[Photo: Extreme! "Oldboy," Tartan USA, 2003]