Simitar Entertainment: Difference between revisions

Simitar Entertainment, Inc. was a Minnesota-based company founded in 1980 that released content on VHS, DVD, CD and CD-ROM. It was founded by Mickey Elfenbien and Philip Kives, who were the CEO and founder of K-Tel, respectively. They bought out Pickwick Records and began releasing music. Eventually, they became one of the leading names in budget VHS. They also released many tapes of sports footage, and spun off Simitar Motorsports Video for this purpose. They also had a short-lived Japanese animation distributor known as Ani-Magine Anime, started by John Litton. In 1997, they became the first independent film producer to release their films on DVD. Simitar Entertainment was torpedoed by a lawsuit filed by Titan Sports (former owner of WWF, now known as WWE), who sued them for copyright infringement over their distribution of ''WWF: The Music, Volume 3''. After Simitar lost the case, they faced bankruptcy issues in 1999, shutting down in 2000. Their film library ended up being sold to Brentwood Communications (later BCI Eclipse).