CNN is reporting Eastman Kodak may cease operations

[Dennis Toeppen]

Yikes.

[Robin Phillips]

it seems like because its a possibility they need to disclose it, though they may also be saying this to apply pressure on their creditors to allow for more flexibility in paying their loans. heres hoping they dont implode. or if they do, the film manufacturing business can be spun off and kept operating. 

probably means price increases though.

[Albion Hockney]

things are not looking good out there. jeez 

[Dennis Toeppen]

Situation may be less bad than reported, it turns out. 

Edited August 12, 2025 by Dennis Toeppen

[Tyler Purcell]

I don't see any major issues. 

They need to kill Alaris off, which is the company who is paying for the pensions. Let the lawsuits flow in. Fight them and regroup through bankruptcy protection. They've done this already and when you're managed poorly, this is what happens. Heck, they're such a poorly managed company, they let the key people who designed these films we use, to quit! Like, how horrible at business do you need to be? 

When they file for bankruptcy, which they will, I'll go run my credit cards to the max and buy some film. 

Until then, I don't think there are any real issues. 

[Aapo Lettinen]

1 hour ago, Tyler Purcell said:

When they file for bankruptcy, which they will, I'll go run my credit cards to the max and buy some film. 

Until then, I don't think there are any real issues. 

How long til the labs run out of chemicals to develop your films if their main supplier vanishes? Of course one can use something else and fix the difference in post to some extent. 

I would just be extremely wary if there is a risk of losing workflow continuity. Stocking a million feet would not be the full solution if you do that and after 6 months no one has any original chemicals left anymore 

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

2 hours ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

How long til the labs run out of chemicals to develop your films if their main supplier vanishes? Of course one can use something else and fix the difference in post to some extent. 

I would just be extremely wary if there is a risk of losing workflow continuity. Stocking a million feet would not be the full solution if you do that and after 6 months no one has any original chemicals left anymore 

Lot cheaper if you buy your film pre-processed...

$65

You people going digital yet?? Try it. Don't wait till the end to make the transition. 

Kodak cautions on business operations but remains confident it can meet debt obligations | AP News

133-year old Kodak says it might have to cease operations | CNN Business

Companies are like the gov...they never tell the truth. But time will tell. 

Edited August 12, 2025 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

[Steve Switaj]

Kodak's 10Q (quarterly financial statement) is here:

https://investor.kodak.com/static-files/17a780a0-cd47-4128-8445-418b5d4f0f48

We talked about this at work today, and one person in the group was one of the company accountants.

She confirmed what we all figured, that this is lawyer speak for "OK, we all know we wouldn't put this in here and cause a 20% stock fall is we didn't legally have to, so things are bad and you should expect a bankruptcy or reorganization filing in the 2nd half"

While Kodak would certainly like to make their pension payments go away, they are "only" about $24 million per quarter, against roughly $250 million in revenue (page 22). So while being relieved of them might make a difference, it's probably not going to magically pay off the $500 million in debt that has to dealt with this year.  

She did point out that, one the bright side, though revenues are down this year, Kodak actually made more revenue from the "film and chemicals" part of the business in the first 6 months of 2025 than they did in 2024 ($134 million vs $116 million, pages 17 & 18), so - yay? - slightly  more people are shooting film again, so we've got that going for us, which is nice?

[Karim D. Ghantous]

What's interesting about the corporate world is that there are lots of things that are said that are easily misunderstood in common language.

[Jon O'Brien]

5 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

... time will tell. 

That's it in a nutshell. I wouldn't worry about it. Someone will make motion picture film and the processing chemicals.

44 minutes ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

What's interesting about the corporate world is that there are lots of things that are said that are easily misunderstood in common language.

Exactly.

Imagine, all those people out there, including me, they get fantastic film gear together all ready to go, and the world stops making film. O Well, so much for all that.

It's okay. I will just play a fiddle and not care about the whole thing. And go to the beach a lot. You've got to learn to laugh, and not worry.

[Jon O'Brien]

But it's no surprise that Kodak is in trouble. They're not making good films much or at all just at the moment. The better productions tend to shoot film (E.g. Star Wars, James Bond). Lots of little people shooting film but that is probably chicken feed to Kodak. We are in a filmmaking slump and it won't improve until Hollywood et al figures out what audiences want again. Here's a tip: make movies for a general audience that don't attack or target anyone in your audience. It's not rocket science. So, to take a hypothetical scenario, if half your audience are on one side of politics, don't make a movie that paints them as evil or intentionally seek to make a movie that will deliberately get up their noses. That's happened a lot over the years and it resulted in a lot of people walking away from what Hollywood churns out. Is it really so difficult to figure out? Don't divide the community or focus on divisions. Make films for a general audience. Are you in politics or in entertainment? Decide.

Edited August 13, 2025 by Jon O'Brien

[Jon O'Brien]

As for the pensions, I don't see how that can be resolved. Unless someone with a lot of money foots the bill.

[Aapo Lettinen]

8 minutes ago, Jon O'Brien said:

Here's a tip: make movies for a general audience that don't attack or target anyone in your audience. It's not rocket science. So, to take a hypothetical scenario, if half your audience are on one side of politics, don't make a movie that paints them as evil or intentionally seek to make a movie that will deliberately get up their noses. That's happened a lot over the years and it resulted in a lot of people walking away from what Hollywood churns out. Is it really so difficult to figure out? Don't divide the community or focus on divisions. Make films for a general audience. Are you in politics or in entertainment? Decide.

So it is about making bazillion more indifferent movies which don't matter at all and which are so forgettable that people forget in the middle of the movie what it was all about? 

It is quite the opposite. Make movies which do matter, which raise huge conversation, which start political movements. The senseless and tasteless fluffy stuff is for kids entertainment. 

Everything is about politics anyway whether you like it or not. Media conglomerates feed you stories they like to tell to shape the political field and help their owners. political players finance stuff which drives certain causes. Even stuff like the freakin Paw Patrol is partially about shaping opinions about law enforcement etc. 

Christian organizations funding trad family stuff and Jewish organizations funding holocaust survival stories. So does everyone else. Everyone funding stuff which helps their own cause and might earn good money at the same time.

[Jon O'Brien]

I'm afraid you misunderstand me Aapo. No, I don't want fluffy movies about nothing. I want films with timeless stories. Politics is cheap. It's everywhere. It's damn boring. It never goes away. People want a break from all the endless chatter and claims. Half of everyone always disagrees, and round and round and round in circles the mad mad mad world goes all the time. Not for me. Politics of a certain sort drags a movie down, not up. Big themes, timeless stories, human struggle. At the very least, not contemporary politics. O please no. So bloody endlessly around in circles.

[Aapo Lettinen]

Art is about making a difference and letting a new voice through. Not about conformist "take this soothing no brain Marvel flick, we can watch for your money and vote for you at the same time".

I think I will start adding gay characters to all my short film stuff just to piss off conformists and far right 😂  

[Jon O'Brien]

I'm not attacking any group. Nor have I ever. Nearly all the world at the moment seems to want some group or some people to hate. That's the pit the whole world is in right now. They don't want to hate evil. They want to hate some group. That's where the world is again and that's where it was in many times before. Hate is prolific now. And so few question that hate.

[Aapo Lettinen]

3 minutes ago, Jon O'Brien said:

I'm afraid you misunderstand me Aapo. No, I don't want fluffy movies about nothing. I want films with timeless stories. Politics is cheap. It's everywhere. It's damn boring. It never goes away. People want a break from all the endless chatter and claims. Half of everyone always disagrees, and round and round and round in circles the mad mad mad world goes all the time. Not for me. Politics of a certain sort drags a movie down, not up. Big themes, timeless stories, human struggle. At the very least, not contemporary politics. O please no. So bloody endlessly around in circles.

The issue with not wanting to mind about politics is that far right tends to always win then because they do care always. Of course we need a break every now and then but one can not leave the politics alone and let others take care about it. Very soon the symbolic or very real "camps" start to appear in any country no matter how progressive it was in the past.

Politics is creeping into every artform so at very least there should be a reasonable balance how the differing opinions and views are presented. Otherwise it very quickly becomes propaganda designed to affect and shape the masses. 

[Jon O'Brien]

In that case a return to fantasy movies is probably on the way. Or old political stories from a distant era (like Australia's 'Breaker Morant' and ''Gallipoli' feature movies which had a very pointed political point to make, but about an old conflict). I understand your legitimate concerns about world politics of course. It's a complex situation. Another old film that was in a way a very political movie and that I think was excellent and timely but which had a timelessness to it and which also didn't take cheap political shots (not an easy achievement when you think about it) was To Kill a Mockingbird.

Edited August 13, 2025 by Jon O'Brien

[Aapo Lettinen]

Return to fantasy and scifi is common when world politics is too much to bear.

But much more useful would be to make more comedies, the good ones. They are a possibility to process difficult matters in a safe way without it becoming too overwhelming. We need much more South Park style stuff than anything else right now

[Steve Switaj]

1 hour ago, Jon O'Brien said:

The better productions tend to shoot film (E.g. Star Wars, James Bond). Lots of little people shooting film but that is probably chicken feed to Kodak. 

Well, oddly, it's always been chicken feed to Kodak.

Once, years ago, before digital, I was talking to a Kodak rep about how much film the 'film industry' used and he told me something along the lines of,  if Kodak started their year out on January 1st making only motion picture stocks, by about the end of week four or five they would have the entire year's worth of motion picture film in a freezer. The other 11 months would be mostly spent making Kodacolor-II in consumer sized cartridges.  

And in that motion picture slice of the pie the lion's share was stock for prints. Camera film footage paled in comparison. 

It never really mattered how much 5248 we used, Kodak's fate was always going to be decided by the amateur stills market and, to a lesser extent, the cinema print market. Cine stocks were prestigious, and 'Another Oscar winner shot on Kodak' made a nice slogan, but the market didn't have volume.

That's why Agfa left the market in 2005 and Fuji walked away a decade ago. Without the volume from theatrical prints their situation was even worse than Kodak's.

Now we're in 2025.

Kodak had $16 billion in revenues in 1996, now it's about $1 billion, of which about $260 million comes from "film and chemicals". That's what.. maybe a 95% drop in film revenue?

I don't even know if labs are still doing release prints - and I mean that for real, I haven't worked on a project that released primarily on film for a decade and I don't remember the last time I was in a theater that projected it.

And Kodak's real cash cow - 35mm cartridges of Kodacolor-II, are gone forever, never to come back. 

If I had to hazard a guess, I would predict another bankruptcy. They already went bankrupt once, back in 2012, so this time it will be harder to reorganize. Private equity will be involved and it will be ugly they will probably break up the company and strip it for value because there are still medical and printing product lines that are doing really well. The pension overhead will go away in the bankruptcy, but Kodak will end split up into legally-separate divisions that have to each turn an individual profit. 

There's probably enough market for film production to survive in some form. After all, Fuji still makes three E-6 reversal films and a B&W negative film for a small but dedicated stills market, but there will be no more research, and the 4 negative stocks we have today, and one or two specialty print and technical stocks for the few markets that sill use them, will be the end of the cine line.

Edited August 13, 2025 by Steve Switaj

[Jon O'Brien]

As long as we remember to laugh at ourselves, too. Yes, funny comedy would be great. The best way to diffuse someone on our back is to just laugh at them. Good to chat. I'm off to do something else now.

[Tyler Purcell]

9 hours ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

How long til the labs run out of chemicals to develop your films if their main supplier vanishes? Of course one can use something else and fix the difference in post to some extent. 

Bankruptcy in the United States is a protection effort to keep the company alive. It allows you to re-structure debt and then continue operating. 

During Kodak's last bankruptcy proceedings, the consumer never knew anything happened. They continued making film, chemicals and the entire film industry still projected film at the time. So they couldn't just shut down. remember, Fuji stopped making motion picture camera negative right after Kodak came out of restructuring because the demand for Fuji MP basically died off. 

Suffice to say, if they file chapter 7 or 11 again, I don't think film will stop being produced. There are way too many  companies demanding their products from thin film products to chemicals to coated film products, shutting it down would be not possible. 

9 hours ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

I would just be extremely wary if there is a risk of losing workflow continuity. Stocking a million feet would not be the full solution if you do that and after 6 months no one has any original chemicals left anymore 

It didn't happen last time, so I doubt it would happen this time. 

In a perfect world, Kodak would file for bankruptcy and then get out of that pension debt, once and for all. I think once they do that, they'll easily come up with a plan to re-pay their other debt pretty easily. 

In the end, we all knew Kodak wasn't doing well. The numbers have been bad for years, we all pay attention. These new numbers are just a continuation of poor management and decision making. There is a great new team working out of Hollywood which is helping keep the motion picture business alive, bravo to them honestly. But at corporate, it seems like nobody there understands Kodak's place outside of manufacturing raw materials for industrial applications. There is a huge cultural divide between being a producer of raw materials to being a producer of a finished product. Corporate does not want to make finished product, they want to make raw materials. In their mind, finished product is too challenging to deal with, so ok then just re-brand motion picture film with a new company and let another group do the stripping, perforating and packaging. The machines required for that work, could be purchased from Kodak and simply setup somewhere else. What can't be changed are the machines for the rest of the process, that's not possible. Seeing as Kodak already has subdivisions, motion picture could just be another one of those and I think if they went that route, it could secure the future of MP for a while longer. 

[Jon O'Brien]

13 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Seeing as Kodak already has subdivisions, motion picture could just be another one of those and I think if they went that route, it could secure the future of MP for a while longer. 

And in the meantime, take up a musical instrument.

[Tyler Purcell]

2 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

Someone will make motion picture film and the processing chemicals.

Hilarious. 

Never in a million years. 

If Kodak shut down MP production and sold off the machines, it would be dead forever. 

Start researching Farrinna film. They've been at it for years now, still haven't been able to coat motion picture film OR make anything in color. 

Fuji opened up a new factory in China to make a lot of different films, with bold promises, none of them have happened tho. They're only making instax and some re-branded older Kodak gold formula. 

ORWO is making very small batches of color film on a very small practically table top machine in Europe for their still film. They are unable to make properly coated film for color motion picture for some reason. Now they're back to being focused on black and white film, so maybe their color film is over. It was a total failure because they charged Kodak prices for product that was subpar and I don't think they were making any money. 

Illford is buying someone else's color stock for their still stuff. 

There is also supposedly someone new in South Korea who will be making still film, but it's not confirmed. 

So still film is fine, it's thriving. 

Motion picture film is not fine, in fact if Kodak were to shut down, nobody would pick the mantel and here is why. 

First off, Kodak and Fuji own the patents on making modern motion picture film. The exact formula would be required, including the proper steps to manufacture. All of the companies above, have not been able to coat film consistent enough for motion picture use. They have all tried, but they have all failed. Plus, they all realized to compete in the MP business, they would need to be similarly priced to Kodak and that's just an impossibility when you do the math. You have to make WAY more film than they're capable of doing and the risk it just too great. 

Second, nobody would permit a new facility. It's just too hazardous and costly. The Rochester facility is literally built on bedrock, was built over 100 years ago and they have to meet so many standards it's not funny. It would cost billions, take decades to re-develop new machines and in the end, you'd never make back your investment. People tried to bring back technicolor and that would have been super cheap compared, it never happened. 

Third, even if you checked off the first two issues, who is going to trust the new factory? Certainly not Hollywood, who is the largest buyer of film globally. Without the studios and big movies, there is no motion picture film. So the entire concept of a new facility goes out the window anyway. 

Finally, lets say you had the backing of Hollywood, you got all of Kodak's patents, a Saudi Prince is ready to give away 5 billion dollars because he wants a home 15P IMAX theater with new movie releases and lets say there are 5000 brilliant chemists and engineers ready to make it all happen globally, for the good of mankind like going to the moon. It would still take a decade to build properly, it would still fall apart when the Saudi Prince decides he's bored or they run out of money.

Na, none of this fiction will happen, Kodak will either file bankruptcy, figure their shit out and keep making product or they'll shut down operations and that will be the end of motion picture film. Those are the 2 options, but they have been the same 2 options for years now, just nobody seems to pay attention to the data. 

 

Edited August 13, 2025 by Tyler Purcell

[Jon O'Brien]

26 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Hilarious.

Yeah. haha. Really bloody funny.