MONTREAL — Christian Larouche is looking for new digs to house a much leaner version of his Christal Films Distribution after creditors and a Quebec court decided to allow him to keep operating.

A dominant player in the film industry until last year, the distributor of Quebec hits like Les 3 p’tits cochons and the Les Boys trilogy was put under bankruptcy protection in May, a year after it was unable to strike a new deal with its partners Maple Pictures and Lionsgate.

Larouche tells Playback Daily he will continue to manage the company’s catalogue of films, which contains over 250 titles. ‘We worked out an arrangement with our creditors and it was approved. I will continue to manage distribution of those films and the revenues will go to the creditors,’ he says, adding that he will be helped by a skeletal staff — probably only an office manager and an accountant.

Larouche, still president of the company, has moved from its offices in Montreal’s tony Westmount and is currently looking for new office space.

Larouche says he will continue to make films through his production company, Christal Films Productions.

Christal owes $12.5 million to 260 creditors, including Le Groupe Popcorn ($1.7 million), Maple Pictures ($1.4 million), Astral Media ($1.1 million), Wild Bunch Distribution ($980,000), Technicolor ($947,000), Telefilm Canada ($500,000) and Revenue Quebec ($460,000), according to figures released last year by its bankruptcy trustee Raymond Chabot.

Industry watchers speculate that the company got into financial trouble after it split with Maple. Until the spring of 2007, Christal had been distributing Maple’s films in the Quebec market, which was a significant source of revenue for the company. In May 2007, Maple and Lionsgate began releasing their titles in Quebec through Larouche’s rival, Seville Entertainment.

Last summer, Seville picked up 27 films from the catalog of the troubled distributor.

Christal’s creditors agreed to a restructuring on Feb. 26 and a Quebec court approved the arrangement on March 12.