The Shooting Gallery, producer of Ken Lonergan's recent festival hit You Can Count On Me and domestic distributor of Croupier, is broke.

Screen International reported on Tuesday that the New York based production and distribution company is close to insolvency and will close. After the buyout by Toronto's new media incubator itemus inc., TSG has run out of money due to high profit contract deferrals.

The Canadian company said it may be liable for up to $10m in Shooting Gallery debt, an extremely damaging sum and sorry news meant that itemus traded at only half a dollar on the Toronto stock exchange.

Screen's Toronto corespondent gave a brief history of the two companies relations up to last week's shocking press release. STG was bought outright in May by itemusi in a $23m deal, 71m shares of itemus stock, then worth about $20m, and approximately $3m in working capital and debt assumption.

Apparently itemus never intended to move into the film business when they acquired the New York outfit. According to a spokesperson, "The plan was to parcel up (TSG's) film business and sell it on."

The Shooting Gallery chief exec Larry Meistrich declined to comment and those original 71m itemus shares are now worth about $4.3m.