IN June, The Shooting Gallery, a large New York commercial and long-form production house in business since 1991, informed its employees it could no longer continue to meet company payroll. The shop’s closing has had spin-off effects on the Canadian spot landscape, precipitating the closing of The Shooting Gallery’s Canadian roadhouse business Gun for Hire in both Toronto and Vancouver.

Although the company has not yet filed for bankruptcy, The Shooting Gallery’s parent company, Itemus, announced in a financial update posted on its Web site July 18, that ‘ongoing creditor pressure will likely compel [Itemus’] Shooting Gallery subsidiary to file a petition for relief under the U.S. bankruptcy code in the near term.’

The same financial update reports, ‘Itemus may be liable for up to [US]$10 million of Shooting Gallery’s obligations.’

Calls to the New York office of Shooting Gallery went unanswered, as did calls to Gun for Hire representatives in Vancouver. In Toronto, Gun For Hire had leased its facility from Toronto-based Roadhouse Productions and was managed by Roadhouse president Howard Rosen. Rosen explains his company will no longer manage the facility for Gun for Hire.

‘We’re completely separate entities,’ Rosen says. ‘We were surprised [by the closing of Gun for Hire]. All of a sudden, things just kind of stopped.’

Roadhouse continues to look for, and take on, roadhouse jobs. ‘It has not affected Roadhouse. The only way it affected us is they owed us some money. But business-wise, that’s not affecting us at all,’ says Rosen.

‘We’ve always been here, and using the facility for our own productions,’ he says. Roadhouse remains in the same space, and according to Rosen, are the ‘same friendly people.’