With Disney’s Indie studio Miramax closing its doors for good we thought that it would be a final resting place to those lower budget edgier films. But with every death in the family you have to think of the children, and those children need a home. To this end Miramax has put its more than 700 film library rights up for sale and about a cool million a peice. Sorry- not breaking up the set.
But as it turns out, Zombie Miramax may be back to haunt us after all. The New York Times reports that Disney is offering the Miramax name and its 700-film library to interested bidders for the low, low price of just over $700 million. The Weinstein brothers are not bidders just yet, likely because The Weinstein Company is low on funds, not because they’re not interested in reclaiming the name of the company name for their parents.
One serious bidder, though, is apparently Summit, the new distributor that is flush with Twilight cash but has pretty much no other movies to its name. The Miramax library, which includes Shakespeare in Love, Chicago and Pulp Fiction, could help them boost TV and DVD revenue while pouring all that money into better sparkly vampire effects, or maybe even throwing their weight behind more movies like The Hurt Locker.
That is an interesting observation. Summit is considered a bit of a powerhouse with all that money they are swimming in thanks to Sparkly Vampires, but they have to do something before that money train pulls into the last station. Additional revenue streams are important to the continuation of the studio to keep them from closing doors after one big flop.
Either way, Miramax is gone, but its films will find a home. If they don’t Disney will just keep cashing cheques everytime one of them gets dusted off and ends up on the movie network or as a movie of the week on TV.
