The Weinsteins Take Back Miramax?

Indie icons putting together a winning bid for their former label.

12:36 PM
April 16, 2010

http://www.ugo.com/movies/the-weinsteins-take-back-miramax

Credit: The Weinsteins

Every time I turn around, I feel like I'm reading something about how Bob and Harvey Weinstein have no money. From their parting ways with Miramax (the company that made them indie icons) to the floundering of their latest venture, The Weinstein Company, it feels as if every story about the brothers lately might have been written on the reverse side of a cardboard sign that says, "Will Work for Independent Financing."

And yet the scuttling of their glory days - coming in the form of Disney's auctioning off of the famous Miramax label - has the brothers in money-raising mode to buy back their old Hollywood stomping grounds. And for two brothers with widely reported financial woes, apparently they've generated a $600 million bid.

According to The Hollywood Reporter:

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.

Certainly the Weinsteins were instrumental in developing the early-90's independent movie scene, and the pair was never as good as when they were tag-teaming quirky, indie dramas with mainstream, Dimension-made horror fare. That said, while things have changed in this business, we'd certainly love to see the brothers once again control the label that brought them such success nearly twenty years ago.