Miramax

• 1. Miriam and Max

  ›

  Miramax is named after Miriam and Max, the parents of the company's founders. Harvey and Bob Weinstein, along with executive Corky Burger, launched the company in Buffalo, New York in 1979. The name combined their parents' first names. The mission was to distribute films that major Hollywood studios had decided were not commercially viable.

  Seven films released under the Miramax name each grossed more than one hundred million dollars worldwide. Its highest earner, Chicago, topped three hundred million. The box office totals tell only a fraction of the story. How did two brothers from Buffalo build the company at the center of America's independent film boom? And what becomes of a studio when the people who built it are finally gone?

• 2. The Acquisition Playbook

  ›

  British producer Martin Lewis had made two concert films for Amnesty International benefit shows. In 1982, the Weinstein brothers partnered with Lewis to acquire the American distribution rights to those films. Together, they condensed the two into a single release for the American market. The American version of The Secret Policeman's Other Ball reached audiences in the summer of 1982. It pointed toward a method Miramax would refine for years.

  Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, Miramax acquired films from international filmmakers and reworked them for American audiences. Films including Sex, Lies, and Videotape, The Crying Game, Scandal, Pulp Fiction, and Clerks found American screens through Miramax. The company also produced titles including Heavenly Creatures and Flirting with Disaster. In its earliest years, Miramax had focused partly on music licensing, entering a deal with Thorn EMI Video to distribute several of its titles.

  Bob Weinstein started a genre label called Millimeter Films in 1988; it was later renamed Dimension Films. An arthouse label, Prestige Films, followed in 1990 under Mark Lipsky, who was later replaced by Gerry Rich; Prestige was eventually folded into Miramax Films itself. On the 30th of June 1993, the Walt Disney Company purchased Miramax Films, ending the company's independent era.

• 3. The Disney Arrangement

  ›

  Sixty million dollars was the purchase price Disney paid, with more than forty million dollars in existing debt also absorbed. Harvey and Bob Weinstein continued running the company after the acquisition, with more operational independence than any other Disney-owned subsidiary. Disney retained final approval over all releases.

  Harvey Weinstein used the financial backing to fund larger projects from directors including Robert Rodriguez, Gus Van Sant, and Quentin Tarantino. Dimension Films created the Scream and Scary Movie franchises during the Disney years. The studio aimed at times to release a new film nearly every week.

  Disney exercised its override power on specific titles, blocking Miramax from releasing Kids and Dogma. Many Miramax releases during the Disney era earned Academy Award nominations, and many resulted in wins. In 1997, Miramax Films committed to backing a production that Disney would ultimately prevent from completing.

• 4. The Lord of the Rings Gamble

  ›

  Peter Jackson sought financial backing for a Lord of the Rings film adaptation in 1997, and Miramax joined as a primary funder. Disney, as the parent company, disliked the cost of a two-part production and requested the project be reduced to a single film. Jackson and co-producer Saul Zaentz rejected that request. The project needed a new home.

  In August 1998, Miramax sold the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit rights to New Line Cinema for about twelve million dollars. New Line produced the films as a trilogy. Miramax retained a five percent stake in the gross of those films. Half of that stake, two and a half percent, went to Harvey and Bob Weinstein personally. Harvey Weinstein launched a separate new venture that same year, one that would add a different kind of friction with Disney.

• 5. The Breaking Point

  ›

  In 1998, Harvey Weinstein co-founded Talk magazine with editor Tina Brown, without the approval of Disney chief Michael Eisner. That decision angered Eisner. That same year, thirty former Miramax employees filed a lawsuit over unpaid overtime wages.

  By 2003, Miramax had acquired only three outside films while committing eighty million dollars to produce Cold Mountain. Disney president Robert Iger said in June 2004 that Miramax was not properly accounting for overhead, distribution fees, or bonuses paid to the Weinsteins. He added that the company was also failing to apply current accounting rules. Talk magazine had shut down in 2002.

  On the 30th of March 2005, Disney and the Weinsteins announced they would not renew their contract when it expired at the end of September. The primary stated source of the dispute was Disney's refusal to allow Miramax to distribute Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Harvey and Bob Weinstein left on the 30th of September 2005. They started a new company, The Weinstein Company, and took the Dimension Films label with them. Production at Miramax passed to Daniel Battsek, who had previously headed Buena Vista International in the United Kingdom.

  Daniel Battsek refocused the company on fewer, lower-budget releases of higher quality. On the 3rd of October 2009, Disney announced it would reduce Miramax's staff by seventy percent and cut annual releases to just three. Battsek resigned as president effective the 30th of October 2009. The company's New York and Los Angeles offices closed as operations relocated to the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. The move was completed on the 28th of January 2010. On the 9th of February 2010, Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed the company was looking to sell Miramax. He explained that investing in new Miramax films was no longer a core Disney strategy.

• 6. A Library Changes Hands

  ›

  On the 3rd of December 2010, Disney closed the sale of Miramax to Filmyard Holdings. The buyer was a joint venture of Colony NorthStar, Tutor-Saliba Corporation, and the Qatar Investment Authority. The sale price was six hundred sixty-three million dollars. It included seven hundred film titles, books, development projects, and the Miramax name. Mike Lang, formerly a business development executive at News Corporation, was named CEO.

  In December 2013, Miramax entered a deal with The Weinstein Company to develop derivative works from the library. The agreement covered potential sequels, television series, and stage productions, with titles including Rounders and Shakespeare in Love named as candidates. On the 2nd of March 2016, beIN Media Group, a spinoff of Al Jazeera Media Network, acquired Miramax.

  In October 2017, Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual assault, a development that altered the public standing of every enterprise associated with his name. In January 2018, Miramax was among sixty parties bidding to acquire assets from The Weinstein Company. Miramax and Lantern Capital emerged as the strongest contenders; Lantern eventually acquired The Weinstein Company's library.

  BeIN began the process of selling approximately fifty percent of Miramax in June 2019. After months of competing bids involving Lionsgate, Spyglass Media Group, and Viacom, ViacomCBS announced a deal on the 20th of December 2019. The company would acquire a forty-nine percent stake for at least three hundred seventy-five million dollars, with Paramount Pictures receiving exclusive worldwide distribution rights. The deal closed on the 3rd of April 2020. The first announced co-production was The Turkish Detective, a television series based on the Cetin Ikmen novels by Barbara Nadel.

  On the 2nd of October 2023, CEO Bill Block announced he would be leaving Miramax to start his own company, BlockFilm. On the 2nd of April 2024, Jonathan Glickman was officially named the new CEO, with Miramax also acquiring certain projects from his company, Panoramic Media. The catalogue Harvey and Bob Weinstein assembled in their first two decades remained the asset every subsequent owner had purchased.