By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

MIRAMAX ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY TO PRODUCE SEQUELS

Posted Thursday, December 16th, 2010 - Comments Off on MIRAMAX ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY TO PRODUCE SEQUELS
Be Sociable, Share!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA MONICA and LOS ANGELES (December 16, 2010) –Miramax and The Weinstein Company (TWC) today announced an agreement to create sequels to some of Miramax’s best-known properties and to partner on potential new television shows and special edition home entertainment products.

The first films to be produced under the agreement will be sequels to Bad Santa, Rounders and Shakespeare in Love.  The other potential sequels and TV projects  are Bridget Jones’s Diary, Copland, From Dusk Till Dawn, Swingers, Clerks, Shall We Dance, and The Amityville Horror.  This partnership augments an existing relationship between the companies on such franchises as Scream 4 (to be released April 15, 2011), Spy Kids 4 (to be released August 19, 2011) and Scary Movie 5.

In addition, Miramax will handle digital distribution on select sequel projects. Miramax and TWC have also agreed to develop new, special edition materials for Blu-ray releases, such as roundtables featuring cast and directors.

“We are very close to these films and the new management of Miramax also feels that we are in the best position to create sequels that are at once worthy and compelling in their own right,” stated TWC’s Harvey and Bob Weinstein.  “We look forward to working with Mike and his team on getting these films into production as soon as possible, and extending our partnership in the years ahead.”

Mike Lang, CEO of Miramax, stated: “We are thrilled and honored to work with Harvey and Bob Weinstein.  There is no better partner to build on these great films and turn them into franchises, while also creating exciting new TV properties.  This agreement will extend the Miramax library while also enabling us to create new content without committing near-term capital.”

“This is the perfect addition to our ongoing slate, giving us the ability to work on already existing franchises that have had such lucrative success at the box office, as well as a great starting ground to our newfound relationship,” stated TWC COO David Glasser.  “We clearly believe it will be mutually beneficial for both companies.”

About Miramax
The Miramax library is a collection of 700 motion pictures which were produced, financed or distributed by Miramax Films since 1979.  The Miramax library holds some of the world’s most sophisticated, thought-provoking and critically-acclaimed independent films including sex, lies, and videotape, The English Patient, Shakespeare In Love, Reservoir Dogs, Chicago, Good Will Hunting, Pulp Fiction, My Left Foot, Cinema Paradiso, Life is Beautiful, Amélie, Kill Bill, Volume I and II, No Country for Old Men, as well as scores of commercially successful films such as Bridget Jones’s Diary, the Scream, Hellraiser and Scary Movie franchises and Spy Kids.  Collectively the Miramax archives have received 284 Academy Award nominations and 68 Oscars, including 4 Best Picture Awards. For more information, please visit www.miramax.com.

About The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company (TWC) is a multimedia company launched in October 2005 by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the brothers who founded Miramax Films in 1979.  TWC also encompasses Dimension Films, the genre label founded in 1993 by Bob Weinstein, which has released such popular franchises as Scream, Spy Kids and Scary Movie.  Since its launch, TWC and Dimension Films have also released such films as Grindhouse, Lucky Number Slevin, 1408, I’m Not There, The Mist, The Great Debaters, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Reader, The Road, Clerks II, Factory Girl, Halloween, A Single Man, The Pat Tillman Story, Piranha 3D and such recent Oscar nominees as Nine and Inglourious Basterds.

Currently in release is Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter.  Upcoming films include Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine, starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, and John Wells’ feature directorial debut Company Men, starring Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Costner, Rosemary DeWitt, Maria Bello and Chris Cooper.  Recently wrapping is My Week with Marilyn, starring Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Dominic Cooper, Emma Watson and Julia Ormond, Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids 4 with Jessica Alba, and the new installment of Scream 4.

#  #  #

Be Sociable, Share!

Posted in Movie City News, Press Releases | Comments Off on MIRAMAX ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY TO PRODUCE SEQUELS

Comments are closed.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon