The German outpost of Buena Vista International (BVI) and local distributor Helkon have formally ended BVI Television's representation of Helkon titles in German speaking territories.

In fact , at the end of last year, Helkon had unilaterally announced that the arrangement with BVI was over, as the US major failed to place any of Helkon's releases through its output deals with RTL (free-TV) or Premiere World (pay -TV) during the two and a half years of the agreement's existence.

Furthermore, on publishing the figures for the 2000/2001 financial year, Helkon pointed out that the reduced EBIT - from Euros 7.7m in the 1999/2000 financial year to minus Euros 9.3m in the year ending July 31, 2001 - was largely due to the absence of revenues from the TV agreement with BVI.

Helkon had also initially suggested at the beginning of this year that it would terminate its arrangement for BVI Theatrical to handle the theatrical distribution of its films. However, the German office of BVI confirmed in its latest announcement that that its theatrical arm would continue to handle 'those Helkon tirles previously announced as part of its 2002 release slate, including but not limited to Rollerball, The Musketeer, The Contender and Dark, Blue World'.