It never went under, it just stopped doing business...for a while. Essentially, Saban--not Saban the company, but Saban the guy....----Hades wrote:I thought that Saban had gone under a few years ago.
*SOUND OF RECORD SCRATCHING*
Okay, this could potentially get confusing if I don't take the effort to clear some things up. There are two instances of "Saban" here. The first is referring to the actual company, which has gone under a couple different names--Saban Entertainment, Saban Capital Group, and Saban Brands. For short, we'll just call the name of the company in question, "Saban." The other instance of "Saban" is referring to the owner, Haim Saban, whom the company is named after. So I'll be referring to the man as "Haim" to avoid confusion.
Anyways. Saban never "went under." Haim sold Saban and all of its properties to Disney in 2001, and he still holds the world record for the largest financial transaction between a corporation and a private citizen. It made him an overnight billionaire, who already had millions to his name. Haim's real dream was to enter politics, particularly with regard to support for Israel. However, considering all the money that Haim had, he wasn't really able to start a political career of any significance. For that reason, around the 2010/2011 area, he decided he wanted to get back into the entertainment business, and formed a new corporation called "Saban Brands" (which, again to avoid confusion, will be referred to as "Saban"). The newly-formed Saban then purchased several properties, most notably the rights to all previous "Power Rangers" series, and the rights to the new one that's currently airing, "Power Rangers Samurai."
So he literally bought "Power Rangers" back in the early nineties, sold it, and then bought it back ten years later. On a slightly unrelated note, how unbelievably rich must you be if you decide to sell an entire property like "Power Rangers" only to turn around and go, "Eh.....y'know, on second thought, I don't think that was a good idea. Oh well, I'll just buy it back."
In any event, Saban has been back for a few years now, and they've apparently been looking to add more shows to their lineup. "Yu-Gi-Oh" should be a pretty good match for them business-wise considering the company's history. Again, though, this isn't good news for fans of the original Japanese versions. With 4Kids we at least had a way to legally watch the subtitled version, and we may not have that now.
