(Keep refreshing for breaking news): I’ve just learned that representatives for Inglorious Basterds have scheduled a phone call today this week with Universal Pictures to discuss The Weinstein Company’s financial problems which are being splashed all over the media. Right now, everyone is still operating on the premise that TWC can come up with the $30 million or moreo marketing money budgeted for Inglorious Basterds. But that was before news came out that The Weinstein Company is on the brink (amid rumors the end could come in August) intenwsified by last week’s bad news that TWC has hired a financial advisory firm to restructure.
The deal for Inglorious Basterds had always been a 3-way financial partnership among Quentin Tarantino, The Weinstein Company, and Universal. But a worst case scenario was always considered by Quentin’s people: What if TWC which has domestic didn’t have the resources to market and/or release the movie? Universal has foreign. Would it pick up the North America as well? Meanwhile, Universal is the distributor of the valuable domestic DVD rights on behalf of the 3-way partnership. But now I’ve learned that Genius may kick up a fuss.
That’s not all. Film financing sources tell me that, at one point, The Weinstein Company had scheduled for release the movie All Good Things for July 24th. This would have been the indie’s first pic out since February.
But now TWC will be pushing that film to the 4th quarter, which prompted talk that TWC “doesn’t have the P& A to release it” and “is are worried about the financial results of its distribution”. Not so, says an insider with the production. It won’t be delivered until fall “for reasons having nothing to do with the Weinsteins”. Of course, this info was relayed to me after the Weinsteins placed a call to someone connected to the pic. I’m told “the movie is really strong. We just needed more time to complete it.” Groundswell Productions financed the movie but is depending on TWC for marketing and distribution.
TWC also had scheduled Shanghai, a $50+ milllion production, for release on September 4th. One of my sources explains, “They will push that film to another date in the distant future.” There is also word internally that they may push off Youth In Revolt, currently scheduled for October 30th, into the distant future. What this all means is that TWC is “hoarding whatever cash they have left to be able to release Inglorious Basterds,” a film financer analyzes. Tarantino’s film is scheduled for release August 21st.
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Blah blah blah, Harvey sucks, blah blah blah.
The whole company seems cursed. Did Harvey piss off an old Gypsy woman at some time?
Basterds has some excitement behind it, but could go either way, becoming either a company saving blockbuster, or a mega-turkey like Grindhouse. And none of the rest of TWC’s slate seem all that capable of setting the box office on fire.
I expect the vultures to swoop in, buying up any TWC assets with any value left at fire sale prices, and a lot sooner than you expect.
The Weinstein Company is in financial distress… and the crowd goes wild…!
How is their movie version of the musical NINE being affected by all of this? It’s supposed to go out in November and, based on the stature of people involved (Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, and Judi Dench being directed by Rob Marshall), I would imagine it’s likely to be a big Oscar contender. Given Marshall’s success with CHICAGO, it might grow into a financial hit, too. Are they going to hold to its date?
Wow! How the once mighty have fallen. If I were them I would go crawling on hands and knees back to Disney and ask for their old job back.
Clearly TWC was unprepared to compete with the big boys, they tried to come off as a major studio right from the very start and now they’re floundering. They should’ve gone the old school New Line route, focusing on producing movies for as little as possible.
BRILLIANT
You know the Pitt film is going to give TWC a huge cash flow to put out their other films, end of story
It is a win win
People don’t remember (esp the Weinstein brothers) that when they ran Miramax in the early 90s before Disney bought them they we’re NOT financial geniuses swimming in cash. Most of their movies squeaked by but it was still a struggle to open a film. Basically, when I worked there around ’92, the company was on the brink. One day I came into work and nobody was there. It turns out the power was shut off and nobody told me not to come to work that day (that was recounted in Biskind’s book I think). Miramax flourished only with Disney’s open check book pretending to be a huge success… in reality, the Wein Bros overspent and took huge bonuses despite losing money at the end of the day (a reason why Michael Eiser got rid of them eventually).
Not sure why people are saying Basterds could go either way- People in Cannes hated the film and the release date is not a strong one for commercial films.
Weinstein has been out of cash for a while. No one will go near them. Stick a fork in it- done.
Another piece on TWC and another chance or everyone to bash them. Don’t get me wrong they can be and often are horrible people. I know enough people to have dealt with them first hand to know that. I also know a lot of good and decent people work for them and those people don’t deserve to be unemployed. So bitch about the brothers if you must but don’t root for their failure. Someday they will be gone or retired but hopefully good people will keep the company living and employing people.
Does that mean Rob Zombie’s “H2″ will get a direct-to-DVD release instead? One can only hope.
Perhaps TWC should have focused on small budgeted projects as opposed to those costly mid/upper-range films. Alá Miramax.
The reason why Grindhouse failed is because they utilized a costly marketing/distribution approach that didn’t follow suit with the genre the film catered to. They should have released the film on a very limited number of screens with actual arthouse theaters and I guarantee the film would have made more money running for a year as opposed to the 3 week stint on 3000+ screens that it premiered on. Plus the $50m+ marketing campaign behind it was foolery. Again, going big isn’t what that film needed. It needed a small independent approach that catered to the midnight movie crowd (just like the great midnight money making ventures of El Topo, I am Curious Yellow and Eraserhead – which took four years to become successful).
To be honest the failure of TWC doesn’t surprise me. We all know Harvey is a loveable prick (depending on your POV) but he put the cart before the horse on this outing.
If Harv really is waiting for Basterds to save the day, he’s far more deluded that anyone thought…After riding on a wave of industry denial and audience forgiveness for the last 10 years, Emperor Q is going to to be found shivering and naked in the flickering scratchy (added in post) glow of one hell of a turkey. Bubb bye Harv…
This is a perfect time for a studio to figure out how to market a film on a limited budget. Just let the hype build through Twitter. Or put out a deluxe DVD with the release.
Basterds is going to bomb hard.
Older audiences will feel QT’s postmodern depiction of WWII was disrespectful and younger audiences will feel cheated by the misleading advertising that tries to sell it as a Pitt-anchored action movie when in reality it’s just another self-indulgent ensemble gab-fest by the pompous would-be auteur.
The film really could be the end of the Weinsteins. It will most certainly mark the end of the business association between them and the guy who should’ve stayed behind the video store counter.
Roger Ebert has been the biggest champion around for this self-important creep and even he didn’t walk away from the Cannes screening having anything terribly complimentary to say.
Harvey you putz! Its easy to be a bigtime player when you have deep pockets. Should have never broke off from Disney you douche. You deserve this.
I’m still mad about what he did to Project Runway…
Didn’t Harvey loose a lot of weight? That’s were the problems started. It’s fat karma coming back to bite him.
What goes around comes around… He had it coming!
don’t most of your idiots get it?
harvey and bob may be this, they may be that, but their success is crucial to there being and indie film biz.
if these guys fail, how much harder do you think it gets to get funding let alone indie distribution.
there used to be a saying “as gm goes, so goes america” harvey and bob were / are the same thing.
now if they go as gm has, life just got harder for all of us without studio deals (99%).
At Sundance Harvey was trying to talk his way into one of the parties — to no avail. It wasn’t lost on anyone who saw the spectacle unfold how the tides had turned in the last half-decade. As for Inglourious Basturds, the film was complacent. Perhaps a strong producer could force QT to trim it into something audiences will recommend to their friends, but a producer that strong could certainly have gotten himself into that party at Sundance — so I’m not holding my breath that Harvey will meet with any success against the ego that is QT. I predict medium business on the opening weekend, quickly losing position to whatever idiot comedy is coming out the next week.
What might this mean for The Alchemist project? Word on La Croisette, from Paulo Coelho’s own mouth, was that Harvey has promised him a script ‘in three months’ and production by year’s end (this after HW took a year to find a writer, apparently hating every pitch he heard and terrified of the book’s legions of fans). None of that sounded realistic to an ear actually in the business, of course, but I wonder if the project’s going forward at all, or if HW was blowing smoke up Coelho’s arse.
I mean, I guess this is the obvious thing to say but, isn’t this karma for recutting every single movie that comes across their path? They’ve had a few high-profile successes, but everyone knows that they butchered all the rest.
karma !
Harvey and Bob’s potential demise is terrible news. This means one less Hollywood studio and more industry
layoffs. To all of you who are rooting for Bob and
Harvey’s demise- shame on you ! If The Weinstein Company goes under then it just adds to Hollywood’s current woes.