Hey there guys. For those of you who are not regular Movie Blog readers, this post really won’t be of any interest to you. For those of you that are… this post is to update you on what’s been going on here over the last few months, where Doug Nagy is, and where the site is heading.
I’ll do this in point form for brevity’s sake:
– Back in late 2007 I sold The Movie Blog to Peerflix. Part of the deal was that Peerflix wanted me to stay on and run the site, and I insisted I wanted Doug Nagy brought on as full time staff as well. They wanted us to move to Los Angeles so they offered to pay our rent to make that possible.
– Everything under Peerflix was smooth and wonderful
– In late Summer 2008 I was informed that Peerflix had sold themselves and The Movie Blog to Live Universe, owned by self proclaimed MySpace creator Brad Greenspan. I felt uneasy about the change in ownership, but was excited about the possibilities at the same time.
– Live Universe missed our first payment, rent payment and purchase payment. We got an eviction notice because we didn’t have the rent money. We were not off to a good start with Live Universe.
– We had never been paid on time under Live Universe, getting eviction notices each month
– Doug and myself are owed thousands of dollars in unpaid expense money that neither of us has ever been given. This stopped us from being able to go to movies, special events, festivals etc. It also set us back since all that money had come out of our own pockets.
– I ultimately got evicted from my place in Hollywood due to Live Universe’s failure to pay me
– The Movie Blog was sold on a monthly payment basis instead of one lump sum. They were to pay me a few thousand dollars each month for 2 years until it was paid off. In the 4+ months since Live Universe took over Peerflix and The Movie Blog, they’ve only made 1 of those payments.
– A few weeks ago I warned Live Universe that I was going to cite them for default on the purchase agreement and take back The Movie Blog unless they paid what was owed. They never did. On Tuesday I notified Live Universe that I was taking The Movie Blog back, and I have.
– I’m going to continue to run The Movie Blog or the next few months and then make some decisions about what to do
– Doug Nagy is no longer with The Movie Blog since we don’t have people paying us anymore. Doug has poured his heart and soul into The Movie Blog and it would simply be unfair for me or anyone else to ask him to continue working for free. Doug also got royally screwed in all of this, which just pisses me off even more. If we ever find a way to get revenue for the site (I’m not a sales person at all), I’ll approach Doug about joining the site again. Maybe I’ll be able to convince him to join me for some podcasts if you all ask him nice enough.
– Rodney is still around and you will see posts by him for the time being as well.
– There is a LOT more to the story… but that’s enough to give you the basic idea.
So that’s the skinny folks. Clearly you can see why Doug and I haven’t been able to talk about any of this over the past few months and I’m sure you can understand that I can’t give any more details than what I’ve given here. Thanks for all your support guys. Oh, and go visit www.dougnagy.com and let Doug know you support him and miss him.
