Weinsteins’ Media Makeover: Project Add-More-Runway
Via the NYT’s The Weinsteins Scramble to Regain a Golden Touch in Hollywood story, there’s more personality restructuring going on within the Weinstein Company: talk of the relatively new “newco” being stretched too thin in creating a “Barry Diller-style conglomerate” with the 2005 $1 billion in private equity from Goldman Sachs, which Joe Ravitch set up. Ravitch is now working with William Morris Endeavor. A few directors “made” by the Weinsteins, via Miramax/Disney days, impart that the guerilla-style of old, indie studio days needs to return. Kevin Smith, following “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” suggests that the brothers succeeded when they were hungry, but now are “starving and desperate.” Harsh but perhaps realistic.
With many of the MSOs (think John Malone of Liberty) looking for more quality/niche/sponsored programming and theatrical drivers – and the Weinsteins with the success of their Bravo/now Lifetime TV’s “Project Runway” series and good advance tracking for Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” – the possibility exists that they re-tether themselves to a corporate parent that takes the time (unlike Goldman) to talk to Disney’s Eisner and find what works with them to re-craft their magic.
With Bob Weinstein still solidly behind genre films, and especially back to basics with the “Scary Movie” franchise, their opportunity to double dip between a major MSO or studio, and their own specialty label seems like a valid opportunity. Run the films as co-productions even between TWC (Weinstein Co) and MSO x, y or z, one might argue.
Crafting that kind of deal would allow them to stay all film and tv – not all media as in Halston, ASmallWorld or similar outside projects – yet keep some of the intellectual property and library rights that make sense to the original Miramax DNA.
Bob’s genre films would have to play through the MSO’s books; but, as they did with “The Lord of the Rings” and other films – where the Weinsteins took a piece of the action yet helped the film get made (and rewarded at the Oscars) – this would be financial incentive to make the films work for everyone.
Tie the payout to the equity, and let TWC continue to live on as a co-production partnerco that only shares on success.
Hybrid in nature, this type of arrangement befits the current marketplace of MRCs and other alternative production, financing and distribution. And, if it executes well, could allow the Weinsteins to engineer their bigger films/tv projects using the MSO apparatus, while keeping TWC alive.
On the other hand, it could also misfire more prematurely than Disney did with Miramax over “Fahrenheit 9/11,” but if moves too controversial for an MSO came up, they could be offloaded to TWC and its stable of indie/mini-major studios peacefully.
Below, additional NYT color on the somewhat transparent realizations or hubris that the Weinsteins are revealing these days:
Per Harvey Weinstein: “What happened was, I got more fascinated by these other businesses and I figured, ‘Making movies, I can do that in my sleep,’ ” he says in an interview in his office in downtown Manhattan. “I kind of delegated the process of production and acquisitions. Yes, I had a say in it, but was I 100 percent concentrating? Absolutely not. I thought I could build the company and delegate authority, and that’s where it went wrong.”
Behold the charming Harvey, a plumpish, easily excited man with ink-dark eyes, two days’ worth of facial stubble and a trace of a New York accent. He is self-deprecating, chatty and usually in a rush. He has about him that magnetic field of charisma that you recognize as soon as you pass through his orbit.