Interview starved for years — then its owner bought it back from himself for $1.5M

Interview was Andy Warhol's magazine — founded in 1969, nicknamed 'the Crystal Ball of Pop' — bought by art collector Peter Brant in the late 1980s. For fifty years it traded on access and covers; behind the scenes, a spokeswoman admitted, it had been losing money for some time, and high-level staff worked without full payment for years.

The end came in a cascade. Staff were locked out of the SoHo office in February 2018 over a rent dispute; editorial director Fabien Baron left that April owed $600,000, and colleagues sued over unpaid wages — a former associate publisher claimed $230,000, a former president $170,000. On May 21, 2018 the magazine announced it was folding; Chapter 7 liquidation followed, with roughly $3.3M owed to staff, freelancers and partners.

Then the owner bought his own wreckage. Brant's new company Singleton LLC — holder of an $8M secured claim built from the cash he had lent the magazine — paid $1.5M for the assets, a sale Baron's lawyers fought to delay as an insider deal; the trustee kept the timeline. On September 6, 2018, issue 521 was out — same family leadership, Warhol name intact, the unsecured creditors left behind.