Another Weinstein Uh-Oh
Using the blink-and-you'd-miss-it 7.11 opening of Death Defying Acts as a bellwether and ricocheting off those recent Bob-and Harvey-are-on-the-ropes articles in Business Week and the Hollywood Reporter, the Sunday Telegraph's Tom Teodorczuk posted his own assessment yesterday about how the boys seems to be "up against it." One non-attributable industry guy is heard from, and Teodorczuk speaks to yours truly also (on the record, of course). But mainly it's a numbers-and-business-moves analysis piece.
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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on July 21, 2008 at 9:31 AM
comment #1
Thrudvangar says ...
Did you really say, "the Weinstein," or is that a typo?
Posted by Thrudvangar at July 21, 2008 10:40 AM
comment #2
D.Z. says ...
Why do they need $20 million to pay for something which probably costs less than $1 million to shoot on cable?
"In November 2005, when the Weinstein brothers acrimoniously split from Disney, their former corporate owner, to go it alone, the smart money was on their company swiftly becoming the most successful independent movie company in Hollywood."
No, you'd have to be an idiot to support a company which was worth billions specifically because of its deal with Disney, and which gave up all that free money because of egotistical management. Eisner does deserve some trash-talk, but he got it right with Harvey and even Pixar. Who'd be stupid enough to do a similar distribution deal like FOX does with Star Wars nowadays? Jobs got greedy, and ended up crawling back to The Mouse.
"Increasingly loud critics argue that not only has the Weinstein Company conspicuously failed to deliver an arthouse blockbuster since its inception"
They obviously don't seem to get that the phrase "arthouse blockbuster" is an oxymoron, and very few make the big bucks, even in a more tolerant market for them than, say, the 90s, where, if it wasn't some Goodfellas wannabe like Pulp Fiction, it was lucky to make ten grand.
Posted by D.Z. at July 21, 2008 11:00 AM
comment #3
Bocephus says ...
It's time for the studios to realize that there is a place for everything, and the place for indie movies is no longer in the theatres. Too much advertising and distribution money is required to open a film in movie theatres. When you can't open wide, it can take months for your film to hit most cities, and by that time people have forgotten about it.
It's time to scale back, make your indies for less than a million bucks, and distribute them over the internet or on TV. If the films are good, people will find them. If a movie these days can't be considered successful until it has broken 100 mil, something needs to change.
Posted by Bocephus at July 21, 2008 11:26 AM
comment #4
The Winchester says ...
Still waiting for the Weinsteins to release Killshot.
Just sayin...
Posted by The Winchester at July 21, 2008 6:18 PM
comment #5
moviemaniac2002 says ...
When they no longer had the Disney money-tit
to suck on, I thought the Weinsteins would have
to give up their strategy of parking their movies
in the "Mirimax Fridge", sometimes for years at a time...Harvey liked to use the Fridge as a
forbidding threat to filmmakers who crossed him.
Just wondering...if TWC goes out of business and the Weinsteins start a third company, will we have another immediate fire sale...where Harvey
dumps all his unreleasable films into theatres
in the space of a few weeks.
Posted by moviemaniac2002 at July 21, 2008 8:46 PM