Seems activity on the auction for the purchase of Miramax is potentially back in the hands of the guys who started the studio in 1979.
If Disney accepts the bid and negotiations go well, the Weinsteins would have complete control and ownership of the 611 title library and the studio they founded.
Miramax founders Harvey and Bob Weinstein had been building enough financial muscle to put together an offer of $600 million or thereabouts, seeking to top bids from such rival suitors as businessmen Alec and Tom Gores and a more controversial one from Hollywood wheeler-dealer David Bergstein.
Harvey and Bob Weinstein have been kibitzing with billionaire financier Ron Burkle throughout the auction process. In addition to Burkle’s Yucaipa group, the duo’s backers include hedge funds Fortress and Colbeck Capital. In effect, Burkle and friends would be the official buyers, but the Weinsteins effectively would run the operation.
Interestingly enough Ron Burkle is the co-owner of the Pittsburg Penguins, and Miramax is a long time home of Kevin Smith who is trying to get his hockey movie Hit Somebody made.
Now Disney denies that there is any deal finalized on it and Nikki Finke at Deadline.com venemously bites back.
Disney is denying The Hollywood Reporter’s claim that the “Weinsteins Take Back Miramax”. The trade sent out an email alert for a story with that headline — to which Disney responded to me on the record just now, “No [Miramax] deal done and reports to the contrary are false”.
While Nikki is snapping, if she read the THR report it says this is the official bid put forward. No where in the article does it say it is already a done deal, or that they are the only bidders.
Nikki also breaks professional decorum calling The Hollywood Reporter “TheCrap” and that “little trafficked website is notoriously inaccurate”. I am sure if you dig you will find stuff Nikki reported on that wasn’t accurate at some point too. Its the nature of the industry.
But I don’t see anything inaccurate about them reporting that the Weinsteins have put together the financial backing to bid on the studio they once ran.
Exhale Nikki.
