Posts Tagged ‘The Weinstein Co’
We have the intersection between famous people and crazy people to thank for no small amount of entertainment. Take the lawsuit filed by Dannez Hunter, who claims that in 1999 he submitted a story treatment to Miramax about a character named Ren. Hunter claims that Ren became O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill, and that Quentin Tarantino stole elements of his treatment, including the specific manner of murder of Ren’s mother.
But it gets better, because Hunter also applied for a job at Miramax, and was, ahem, “never given a return phone call, as numerous similar situated less qualified Jewish and White people were bestowed job after job after job.” He wants a bag full of money, in part because whites and jews got all the royalties from Kill Bill. Good luck with this one, buddy. [TMZ]
After the break something slightly more substantive but less amusing: Tarantino reportedly may make a Harvey Weinstein documentary.
News that Tarantino might make a documentary on Harvey Weinstein cropped up about a week ago in the New York Times and most everyone seemed to miss it, but now it has surfaced once more. See, Barry Avrich, who wrote and directed a documentary about Lew R. Wasserman (The Last Mogul) is angling to make a film in the same no-holds-barred vein, with Harvey Weinstein as the subject. But Harvey seems to be less than interested in that film, currently called Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project. Avrich says the film will be balanced, not a hatchet job, and that Harvey Weinstein at first advised him not to make it.
Then Weinstein reportedly said that Quentin Tarantino was mulling his own doc about the mogul, which would start with Weinstein’s days as a concert promoter and then get into his years with Miramax. Tarantino’s spokesperson said that he and the Weinsteins are “unofficially kicking around the idea” of the documentary.
This doesn’t seem like the most likely project — at this point it really looks like something that is just being floated to block the doc by Avrich, and Tarantino already has a laundry list of potential projects that includes a ’30s gangster picture, a western, an Inglourious Basterds prequel, a Kill Bill sequel, a slavery picture and likely several others.
Still, it’s an interesting idea. On one hand, a Weinstein doc from Tarantino would seem superficially like one of the more biased projects out there. But going in with the understanding that the bias exists, we also might be able to get some interesting insight on Harvey from Tarantino, who has worked intimately with the producer throughout almost his entire career.
Update: Wes Craven has corrected this story on twitter:
“SCREAM 4 - LA Times has it wrong. I’m still in talks but nothing has been finalized.”
The original report follows after the jump.
Hidden in an LA Times article profiling horror director Wes Craven is the following mention:
Craven recently finished “My Soul to Take,” which is scheduled for release sometime this year. And in May, he starts on “Scream 4.”
Yeah, that’s right — Craven will begin shooting Scream 4 in May 2010. This confirms Neve Campbell’s previous comment that the project was gearing up to begin production in April. Looks like it is a go, but a month later.
Previously:
- Neve Campbell said back in November that she is “pretty sure” that Wes Craven is back on board to direct Scream 4, which is tentatively set to begin shooting in April 2010.
- Courtney Cox and David Arquette have also committed to the fourth film.
- Scream 4 is being written, concurrently with a script for a fifth film, by series screenwriter Kevin Williamson.
- The film will be set ten years later in Woodsboro, and is described as “an ensemble” which will introduce several new characters.
- Williamson has said that it will reference manga comics, Asian ghost girl movies, PG-13 horror movies, vampire films, M. Night Shyamalan movies and even torture porn.
via: shock
Miramax may be closed, but the story ain’t over yet. Disney has tried to shop the company around for sale in the past, and even offered the name to Harvey Weinstein for a reported $1.5 billion. But no one bought, and last week Disney closed down the company, ending the company’s 31-year run.
But Disney is still trying to sell, and has started an auction off at a lower price: bids of over $700 million are being entertained for the company name and full library of seven hundred films. (How many of those are Hong Kong films that Harvey bought and never released?) Summit is said to be one of the notable bidders, but The Weinstein Company is absent so far.
The New York Times has a story on the sale, saying that in addition to Summit, interest is coming from “at least one other independent studio” and “several private equity groups.” Any final sale could happen within the next couple months. The fact that Bob and Harvey Weinstein aren’t among the current prominent bidders isn’t too surprising, as the only perpetual story about The Weinstein Company is that it doesn’t have enough money to do much of anything.
For a film library that contains seven hundred films and reportedly generates $300m each year through various licensing deals, the current price sounds like a hell of a bargain. The NYT notes that revenues from TV and DVD aren’t as reliable now as they once were, and that the independent valuation of the Miramax library isn’t necessarily reliable. But as the film collection contains many of the major American independent films of the past twenty years and a combined 200 Oscar nominations, you’d think a savvy company could leverage plenty of revenue out of it. Says something about the current policies at Disney that they don’t even want to bother with it, don’t you think?
What we don’t know is whether the six remaining finished Miramax films are considered part of that library. Word is that Disney will be releasing one or two of those directly, but we don’t have concrete word on the fate of those six movies (Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, The Tempest, The Baster, The Debt and Tell Me, formerly called Last Night.)
UPDATE: Just after I published this, The Weinstein Company was announced as the distributor for Blue Valentine, the drama starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. The film has been one of the critical hits of the fest, but I’ve got to wonder what TWC will be able to do with it. The company is struggling, and I don’t have much faith in its ability to give the movie a proper release. Check Peter’s video review of Blue Valentine here. Original article follows.
Right at the beginning of this year’s Sundance there were a couple of big deals made. The doc Waiting for Superman was bought by Paramount and Buried, starring Ryan Reynolds, was picked up by Lionsgate. (Read Peter’s review.)As the festival winds down there have been a couple other big buys. Hesher is the most notable, with the Joseph Gordon-Levitt starring film going to Newmarket. The very well-received The Kids Are Alright has also found a home, and while Joel Schumacher’s Twelve isn’t the best-reviewed film at the fest, it’s got a deal now, too.
Deadline Hollywood reported that Newmarket bought into Hesher for around $1 million, with the deal-clincher being a screening in Salt Lake City that proved that a regular (i.e. non-festival) audience would respond to the film. No details yet on how and when Newmarket will get the film out to audiences. The distributor is also reportedly high in the running to close a deal for Splice. (Read Peter’s review.)
The Kids Are Alright, the new film from Laurel Canyon director Lisa Cholodenko, has been doing quite well, and Focus Features picked it up for nearly $5m. The family drama, featuring Julianne Moore and Anette Benning as as lesbian couple whose children want to reunite with their biological father (Mark Ruffalo) was shot quickly, but evidently hits all the right notes for a family drama. It’s the biggest sale of the fest so far.
Twelve, the latest film from Joel Schumacher that is already topping worst-of Sundance polls, was bought by Hannover House for $2 million. Hannover House? Yeah, I have no idea either. Movieline notes that the outfit has released Teen Yoga and Zombie Farm in the past. Peter didn’t like the film much, but with the long arm of Hannover House behind it, I’m not sure Twelve is something most of us will get a chance to experience (or avoid) before it hits DVD.
Finally, Deadline Hollywood is also reporting that The Tillman Story is close to a distribution deal with The Weinstein Company emerging as the likely winner. Really? Who would take a chance with the beleaguered Weinsteins right now? The “low-seven figure” deal is reportedly set to position the film near Oscar time later this year. Check out David’s review and interview with the director.
UPDATE: Now The Weintein Company says they won’t be cutting theatres from Nine’s release. A rep insists that it will remain on 1400 screens this week. Let’s see what happens next week… Original article follows.
When it comes to year-end releases, Harvey Weinstein likes to bet on awards contenders. This year his horse was Nine, the Rob Marshall-directed adaptation of the stage musical. There was a lot of pedigree to back his pick: Marshall’s previous musical, Chicago, did well with critics, audiences and award balloting. The stage version of Nine won awards. And there’s the cast: Daniel Day-Lewis and a bevy of notable women: Kate Hudson, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren, Marion Cotillard and Penélope Cruz. (And Fergie who, ironically, turned out to be the selling point.)
But Nine’s reviews have been dismal and the business worse. When it went wide last week it was only the eighth-highest earner, with a $5.5m tally against a budget over $60m; the film has made about $9m globally. If the Weinstein Company was hoping the film would offset the studio’s widely-reported financial woes, then this has been a season of disappointment. The film is already scaling back from the wide 1,400 theatre release. But Harvey has a plan to keep going into 2010.
Reuters reports that in the next couple weeks Nine will scale back to 800-900 screens. That’s a blow, considering that the hope was that Nine would repeat the success of Chicago. But between the better-than-expected success of Inglourious Basterds and a new financial plan, the company isn’t even close to mortally wounded.
The New York Post reports that there are several possible deals in motion to repay TWC’s creditors. The key one is that Goldman Sachs, to which TWC owes $500m, and Ambac Financial, which is insuring the debt, are agreeing to give the company a chance “to figure out a way to have the studio go forward in a healthy manner.” (Basically replicating the deal MGM made earlier this year, on a much smaller scale.) There may be another cash infusion from a different fund, as well.
TWC has Youth in Revolt opening soon, so expect to see a lot of eyes trained on the performance of that film as an indicator for 2010.
What are the pleasures of musicals?
Musicals require from their performers the daunting task of simultaneously acting and singing, often while executing choreographed dance. That’s a significant part of the reason we go pay to see live performances: to witness incredibly talented people perform these remarkable feats in real time. Musicals thrive on the tension between consummate professionalism and unpredictability. They also require the perception of continuity of motion in order to be fully enjoyed. When you fashion a musical into a film, you necessarily lose some of those elements.
But you don’t have to lose all of them.
As an audience, we understand on some level that the audio is recorded separately, that the dances probably required dozens of takes to produce the final version that we see on screen. So we make a bargain with the filmmaker: We will try to forget these inexorable truths about the filmmaking process if you do your best replicate the magic of musicals using a screen, a projector, and a few speakers. Rob Marshall’s Nine takes us up on this arrangement, only Marshall fails spectacularly at living up to his side of the bargain.
While it is a remake of Fellini’s 8 ½, Nine is, at its core, a musical. And when the film has a shot that lasts longer than five seconds, it perfectly captures the pleasures of musicals. But for half of the film’s dance numbers, the editing looks more like it came out of a caffeine-loaded college student’s iMovie-edited experimental film. I desperately want to appreciate the intricacies of these musical numbers. I wanted to behold all of the dancers within a single frame, to watch them perform a series of impeccably timed moves in sequence. But the frantic editing and the baffling selection of shots denied me the opportunity to enjoy their talent.
As I struggled for something my eyes could hold onto in Nine, I was reminded of a famous quote from one of the greatest minds of our generation, “Beyonce had one of the best music videos of all time. OF ALL TIME!” Observe:
Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” music video (inspired by the work of legendary choreographer Bob Fosse) is absolutely mesmerizing. The entire video is simply three dancers on a plain background with some great choreography, a bit of creative lighting, and only a handful of cuts. The frame is alive throughout, yet never distracts from the technical virtuosity of its subjects. I would say that, in comparison, Nine completely subsumes its talented performers in its pursuit of the cinematic, but that would imply that I thought Rob Marshall knew what he was trying to do with this film.
Still, Nine is not a complete wash. Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard and even Nicole Kidman each get musical numbers that are pretty effective (Unsurprisingly, they are mostly one-person numbers that don’t require a myriad of dancers performing on screen). Cotillard, in particular, is radiant on screen and her numbers embody the best that musicals can be, songs that dazzle us aurally while conveying backstory, building character, and moving along the plot. I was also actually a fan of Marshall’s splicing of dialogue and action into the musical numbers themselves. I’m not entirely sure it works, but it is always encouraging to see directors trying interesting methods at bringing this difficult art form to the big screen.
None of this takes away from the fact that the film, as a musical, is a mess. Most maddening of all is the film’s centerpiece, a spectacularly choreographed number of the song “Be Italian” which employs the copious use of sand and tambourines. There’s a reason you don’t see sand very often in real-life musicals: despite the fact that it looks great, it’s a bitch to clean up on a soundstage. Here, Rob Marshall had everything he needed to create a musical number for the ages: Boundless resources, formidable talent, and an impossibly large physical stage on which to set it.
And he completely squanders it.
Here is a question to consider: Why bother hiring dozens of dancers to perform an elaborately choreographed dance when the camera is often too close to see most of them? Over and over we’re subjected to oblique angles and rapid cuts when what we really want to see is what the hell it is these women are doing. There is a way to film a musical dance number dynamically and still avoid giving your audience attention-deficit disorder. This is decidedly not it.
There’s a shot towards the end of “Be Italian” during the song’s recap where all of the performers are lined up, side-by-side, and advancing, deliberately and ominously, towards the camera. It’s a stunning shot for a variety of reasons, but it captures the fundamental joy of watching a musical. A large group of people performing a dance in time to music (and the audience being able to see them all) can be absolutely breathtaking. Marshall would have done well to remember this more throughout the rest of his film.
Rob Marshall’s Nine goes into limited release today, expanding wide on December 25, 2009.
We’ve seen two trailers for Youth in Revolt, and with a month left before the film finally opens (it was delayed from a fall open) we’ve now got a red band trailer. This clip follows much the same structure as the second trailer, only with a lot more dirty dialogue. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily, as it’s funny stuff. Check it out after the break.
The primary drawback to this trailer is that it makes it sound a lot more like Superbad, but perhaps that’s exactly the point. On one hand, the film has garnered some praise on the basis of Michael Cera’s performance, which has been said to expand upon his now-typical screen persona. So you’d think that Dimension and the Weinsteins would be eager to emphasize that this is a different Cera than we’ve seen previously. On the other hand, cash is always good and the fallback tactic for selling any movie is to make it look like a similar, successful one.
Maybe this trailer will successfully sell both ends against the middle. You’ve got Cera’s mean, alternate Francois persona on display, and a lot of crude but palatable humor. You tell me — how does this one fly? Without having seen the film, I think I prefer the last trailer. (Though Peter had gripes about the voice over and use of music, which suggests that both elements are handled better in the full feature.)
The film hits theatres on January 8th. Miguel Arteta directs from a Gustin Nash screenplay based on C.D. Payne’s novel. Alongside Cera are Portia Doubleday, Steve Buscemi, Ray Liotta, Justin Long, Jean Smart, Ari Graynor, Fred Willard, Zach Galifianakis, Mary Kay Place and Rooney Mara. It’s a fantastic cast; I’m curious based on that alone.
The Weinstein Co have released a third movie trailer for Rob Marshall’s new musical Nine.
Rob Marshall, who directed Chicago - winner of six Academy Awards including Best Picture, returns to the big screen with another classic Broadway production. The musical tells the story of world famous film director Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) as he prepares his latest picture and balances the numerous women in his life including his wife (Marion Cotillard), a producer, a mistress (Penelope Cruz), a film star muse (Nicole Kidman), an American fashion journalist (Kate Hudson), the whore from his youth (Fergie), his confidant and costume designer (Judi Dench), and his deceased mother (Sophia Loren).
If you missed the previous trailers, you can watch the first andsecond trailers linked. Watch the new trailer after the jump, and leave your thoughts in the comments below.
The original 1982 Broadway production was nominated for twelve Tony Awards and winning five, including Best Musical. In 2003, the Broadway revival of “NINE,” starring Antonio Banderas, received eight Tony Award nominations and won two, including Best Revival of a Musical. Inspired by Fellini’s personal, painful, and beautiful film ‘8 1/2, Nine has been described by Marshall as “a sumptuous and emotional work that translates naturally to the film musical genre because of its seamless relationship between fantasy and reality.”
Watch the trailer in High Defintion on Apple. Nine hits theaters on November 25th 2009.
BloodyDisgusting is reporting that the Weinstein Co and Dimension Films are planning to remake The Amityville Horror… yes… again. The Platinum Dunes’ remake of the 1979 cult favorite grossed over $108 million worldwide in 2005, and is still somewhat fresh in audiences minds. Why launch into another remake, so soon?
It seems to me that the Weinstein’s are desperate to push some franchise sequels/remakes back to the big screen. I never really liked the Amityville series, or the 2005 remake for that matter. But I’m not usually into supernatural/paranormal haunted house films. Having heard many stories about the Weinstein’s, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the idea to remake Amityville was spurred by the success of Paranormal Activity. I’ve always found the story behind Amityville to be more interesting than any of the films that were released.
The book in which the 1979 film was adapted from was said to be based on the real life paranormal experiences of the Lutz family. The cover of the novel featured the tagline, “More hideously frightening than The Exorcist because it actually happened!” and the film was also marketed as being based on a true story. Of cource, over the past 30 years, there has been a lot of controversy and even lawsuits questioning the truthfulness of the account.
In June 1979, George and Kathy Lutz supposedly passed a lie detector test concerning their experiences at the house. The various owners of the house have reported no problems while living there since the Lutz family left in 1976, and the local residents in Amityville, New York are unhappy with the attention that The Amityville Horror continues to bring to the town. I would almost want to see a movie where some of that is incorporated in some way.
Neve Campbell tells Black Book Magazine that she is “pretty sure” that Wes Craven is back on board to direct Scream 4, which is tenatively set to begin shooting in April 2010. Craven had said previously that he wanted to wait for a script to be completed, before he decided if he would helm the next sequel, the first part of a new trilogy.
Courtney Cox and David Arquette have also committed to the fourth film, which is currently being written, concurrently with a script for a fifth film,by series screenwriter Kevin Williamson. The film will be set ten years later in Woodsboro, and is described as “an ensemble” which will introduce several new characters. Williamson has said that it will reference manga comics, Asian ghost girl movies, PG-13 horror movies, vampire films, M. Night Shyamalan movies and even torture porn.
via: Bloodydisgusting
