By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
The Stupidest Media Spin Of Late
Why is everyone constantly writing stories with the psychotic assumption that the “trouble” between Miramax and Disney started over Fahrenheit 9/11?
The funny thing about the Biskind piece about same is that he leads with this notion, but then explains, with unusually few errors for Biskind, how the discomfort built up over time.
Disney does have a very unique, anti-showoff mentality which conflicts with Miramax. But it was a great piece of business… until Harvey decided to get into the $80 million movie business. And it isn’t just one or two movies. It has become more and more the norm in recent years.
In a case like Kill Bill, the Weinstein genius turned a potential $100 million boondoggle into a cash cow. But then there are films like The Great Raid, which no one talks about even though it has been done for well over a year, is said to have cost closer to $100 million than $50 million and has no stars (unlike An Unfinished Life) or across the board raves and incredible looking action sequences (like Hero) that can pull it out of the dumper.
Thing is, Weinstein is a genius at finding what is compelling about a movie and selling the crap out of that. That can’t be replaced at Miramax by Disney. And if he just kept doing that for movies that cost less than $50 million, Disney would be happy to put up with the unpleasant part… anyone would, really. Cause that’s where the money it. And as much as Disney culture might want to smack down The Fat Man, the bottom line is still the bottom line.
Miramax is a graveyard for bad films.
I just looked at the weekday numbers for Shaun of the Dead, #1 per theater avg. in the top ten. Why is this film only showing on 600 screens, particularly when there’s no good teen action/horror getting released this weekend? Why don’t distribution heads get fired when they fuck up a release like this?
Because FOCUS features/Rogue films had no faith
in Shaun making any money in WIDE RELEASE, Shaun.
The film would have been pushed back more if it
were not for the net, in some small part, aiding
in the release date here in the US getting moved up.
They wanted Chuckie to be their first belief, but
they got Shaun instead. What can you do? It might
go wide, but I doubt.
Leaving me pretty damn glad that the true master of the genre (No
knocking Shaun, because it easily ranks in the top
5 of all time zomebie films) George “Deserves to
get a ruttin Honorary Oscar” Romero luckily had
LAND OF THE DEAD picked up for distribution by
UNIVERSAL itself. Leaving me hoping George
will get a number 1 flick next year from a studio
who are all up in the zombie genre now. Not some
off shoot.
zombie movies are a wasteland for the hacks of the industry, but just in business terms they really screwed up the Shaun release. I could have easily done $8-10 mill last weekend if it went wide, or done the same thing this weekend. Now they say they’re going wide next weekend, when there are like 5 major releases in that same demographic so it will get lost. Oh well. Not my money..
Is Danny Boyle a hack?
no, boyle started the zombie craze of late, he created the market for it. The hacks are the guys trying to make a buck off his success. How many fucking zombie movies are out or in the works right now? It’s such a lame genre in the first place. When you’ve gotten to the place in your career where you’re remaking Dawn of the Dead, you might as well just throw in the towel.