Don't ring the death knell for Penthouse just yet – the magazine continues operating and is planning to roll its August issue, a spokeswoman told AVN.com today.
"Everything still stands," said public relations manager Lainie Speiser. "We're still in business. We're still full operating. Everybody's here at work. We've even got some Pet of the Year tour (stops) in New York coming up, at Webster Hall and other clubs. And August will be on sale soon, we are printing."
Speiser declined comment on whether Penthouse founder-owner Bob Guccione had lost his storied Manhattan mansion, facing a July 22 deadline to make a $15 million payment to Kennedy Financing, a commercial real-estate lender. But other reports indicated Guccione – who has been battling throat cancer – did find an eleventh-hour lender to help him make that payment and keep his opulent home.
Speculation that Penthouse was all but in the grave accelerated July 18, when Newsweek.com published an exclusive saying the magazine's cash flow had crippled to the point where employees received only 25 percent of their usual paychecks. Another, more detailed article, in the Sunday Observer of London July 20, said the magazine missed print runs from April through June and might have told U.S. stock and securities authorities that "substantial doubt exists" as to whether the Guccione empire could survive.
Speiser had denied the magazine had a cash flow problem, but other reports indicated Penthouse stood to close down while Guccione faced all but financial ruin. It would be ironic if Penthouse were to cease and desist in 2003 – the 50anniversary year of the magazine it set out to equal and perhaps dethrone, Playboy.
The Sunday Observer said the very thing that made Guccione a success in the first place – his ambition – was also the thing that had brought him to the brink of destruction. "The Penthouse publisher who built a publishing empire out of naked flesh is facing financial ruin, the result of a series of catastrophically egotistical investments that sucked millions of dollars out of his main business – pornography," not to mention an inability for Penthouse to translate well on the Internet, compared to Net-based original content providers offering at least the same, if not slightly better, than Penthouse was once renowned for offering, the Observer said.
Those "catastrophic" investments included, among other things, millions spent producing a pair of expensive box-office stiffs, Caligula (written by novelist Gore Vidal) and a biopic of Catherine the Great, investing millions more in mass-produced portable nuclear fusion kits and genetic engineering, and above all failed real estate investments, including an Atlantic City casino.
The Observer also said it didn't help that Penthouse was losing both circulation and advertising support. "The editorial content is a lot raunchier than most clients will accept," Zenith Media buyer Steve Greenberger told Newsweek.com. "Even alcohol and tobacco companies are saying it is starting to be too much."
Speiser said either the usually retiring Guccione or his own representative was still expected to make a public statement regarding the Penthouse speculation at some point this week.
