ADV to Lose SM License (March 11th, 2004)

It's been running around the rumor mill lately the possibility of ADV losing the rights to the first two seasons of Sailor Moon. It was first suspected to be the case with the huge price reductions of the uncut boxes in various retailers, but now there's some offical backing from retailers. They say that ADV has told them that they lose their Sailor Moon license on March 31st, 2004, and that their products will move to out of print (OOP) status. How does a company lose a license to a feature they only held for less than two years (remember they had rights a year before the boxes came out)? While the contract of uncut Sailor Moon and ADV was pretty much unknown, it can now be verified that ADV had sub-liscensed the uncut seasons through DiC. As some may be aware, DiC's contract with Sailor Moon in the states was to end in 2002, but was renewed for two more years in the fall of 2001. Two years have passed by, and from the looks of it, no renewal will take place. When DiC's contract runs out on March 31st, ADV's contract also directly ends which means no more ADV Sailor Moon products. DiC and/or ADV has yet to offically say anything, though it wouldn't suprise me if they don't until after the contract ends. If anyone wants to purchase ADV's Sailor Moon products, hurry up and get them as they won't be around much longer. On a side note, this only has to do with DiC and ADV, Geneon and Cloverway have nothing to do with this contract therefore the second two seasons and movies are not afected by this news. Update a few hours later: ADV has posted the following announcement on their site: ADV Films today announced that the first 86 episodes of the original Sailor Moon television series will no longer be available in the U.S. on home video after April 1, 2004. Although the response of the fans and sales of this video series in both the dubbed- and uncut-subtitled format have been tremendously successful, the creators of the program have decided against continuing the availability of the home video in the U.S. at this time. All episodes released under ADV Films will remain available for sale in retail outlets and via the company website.