A project one year in the planning and nearly two years in execution, Past the Popcorn ceased publication as of Tuesday this week.

A major share of PtP’s success out of the gate upon launching in October of 2006 was our partnership with Gospelcom.  By providing content for their Entertainment and front pages, PtP served Gospelcom with a reliable stream of solid reviews and articles—and in exchange, Gospelcom provided PtP with the technology infrastructure and marketing muscle to convince publicists and filmmakers that we were serious enough about what we do to be, well, taken seriously.

This delicate and mutually beneficial relationship came crashing to a halt this week with news that Gospelcom will cease to exist as we now know it in less than ninety days.

Effective a week ago, Gospelcom’s editorial flow could no longer guarantee handling our content stream, and so—after due consideration, and after taking a few days to weigh our options—Jenn and I decided that it would be best for our writers (and, realistically, the publicists with whom we work) to cease publication before heading into a major editorial cycle with the heavy rotation of fall releases.

Sadly, this leaves you, our readers, almost as much in the lurch as it leaves us.  And for that, we can only thank you for your kind attention over the last 24 months; and we apologize that we cannot, for now, deliver the content that you have come to expect from us.

From the start, Jenn and I had determined that PtP would be a non-commercial enterprise—that it would, in fact, be a fantastic hobby that the two of us (and the band of great writers we count as friends) could share with each other, and with you.  With Gospelcom’s help, we were able to do that.  But without their help, this is a hobby we cannot sustain, either financially or technically.

We still have no interest in PtP being a “commercial” site.  We don’t want to take advertising for anything we wouldn’t promote for free, and we don’t want to inflict our readers with a barrage of banner ads and dancing GIFs.  We hope you have appreciated that commitment!

So we’re taking thirty days to assess further options.  Please CLICK HERE to visit our reader survey.  If we decide to relaunch PtP at some point, we really want to make sure we understand our readers’ needs.

In the meantime, we’ll be restructuring the front page to bring you news about the most recent DVD releases.

Thanks for visiting, thanks for reading, and sayonara… for now!