Odeon Film's entertainment website www.filmstadt.de was closed down today after negotiations with various investors for a takeover or merger came to nothing

The Filmstadt.de site had been operating since 1999 and had been relaunched last autumn as a subsidiary of Odeon's new Internet holding company OdeonNew Vision providing a mix of film and TV news, a star magazine and online videos.

However, the portal's days were numbered when Odeon Film announced at the beginning of February that it was planning to sell off some of its activities and close down the remaining part of the division within the next two months as a reaction to "the generally difficult market situation" for Internet operations.

Commenting on the move at the time Odeon's executive board spokesman Andreas Pres had declared that "we do not tolerate permanent loss-makers in our business portfolio and had already reduced our Internet expenditure beforehand compared to what was originally planned".

Meanwhile, Dr. Claudius Schikora, Filmstadt.de's managing director, observed on the portal's demise that "unfortunately, many forecasts given in the last twelve months about the development of the Internet have proven to be wrong".