Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein is an American former film producer and convicted sex offender. In 1979, Weinstein and his brother, Bob Weinstein, co-founded the entertainment company Miramax, which produced several successful independent films including Sex, Lies, and Videotape ; The Crying Game ; Pulp Fiction ; Heavenly Creatures ; Flirting with Disaster ; and Shakespeare in Love. Weinstein won an Academy Award for producing Shakespeare in Love and also won seven Tony Awards for plays and musicals including The Producers, Billy Elliot the Musical, and August: Osage County. After leaving Miramax, Weinstein and his brother Bob founded the Weinstein Company, a mini-major film studio. He was co-chairman, alongside Bob, from 2005 to 2017.
In October 2017, following sexual abuse allegations dating back to the late 1970s, Weinstein was dismissed from his company and expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. More than 80 women made allegations of sexual harassment or rape against him by October 31. The allegations sparked the #MeToo social media campaign and subsequent sexual abuse allegations against many powerful men worldwide; this phenomenon is referred to as the "Weinstein effect".
In May 2018, Weinstein was arrested and charged with rape in New York City; in February 2020, he was found guilty of two of five felony counts. Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison, and began serving his sentence. On July 20, 2021, Weinstein was extradited to Los Angeles to face further charges at a subsequent trial, where he was found guilty of three of seven charges on December 19, 2022. Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years in the Los Angeles trial, with his California prison term required to be served separately from his New York sentence.
On April 25, 2024, the New York Court of Appeals overturned the New York rape convictions because of "egregious errors" of procedure, ordering a retrial. Weinstein remained in prison because of the California conviction. The retrial began on April 15, 2025. On June 11, 2025, Weinstein was convicted in a mixed verdict. On June 12, 2025, an additional rape charge case against Weinstein was given a mistrial.
Early life
Weinstein was born in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, in New York City, to diamond cutter Max Weinstein and his wife, Miriam. The family is Jewish, and Weinstein's maternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from Poland. Harvey grew up with a younger brother, Bob, in the Electchester housing co-op in New York City; he graduated from John Bowne High School and then attended the State University of New York at Buffalo. With his brother, Bob, and Corky Burger, he formed Harvey & Corky Productions, which independently produced rock concerts in Buffalo through most of the 1970s. Among the top acts it brought to town were Frank Sinatra, the Who, Jackson Browne, and the Rolling Stones. Weinstein's longtime friend Jonathan A. Dandes followed him to Buffalo and has described Harvey as "aggressive" and "consumed" in matters of business. Although Weinstein attended the University at Buffalo from 1969 to 1973, he did not ultimately graduate, choosing instead to concentrate on his business interests.Career
1970s: Early work and creation of Miramax
In the late 1970s, using profits from their concert promotion business, Weinstein and his brother founded the independent film distribution company Miramax Films, named after their parents Miriam and Max. The company's initial releases were primarily music-oriented concert films such as Paul McCartney's Rockshow.1980s: Success with arthouse and independent films
In the early 1980s, Miramax Films acquired the rights to two British films of benefit shows filmed for the human rights organization Amnesty International. Working closely with Martin Lewis, the producer of the original films, the Weinstein brothers edited the two films into one movie tailored for the American market. The resulting film was released as The Secret Policeman's Other Ball in May 1982, and it became Miramax Films' first hit. The movie raised considerable sums of money for Amnesty International and was credited by Amnesty with having helped to raise its profile in the United States. The Weinsteins slowly built upon this success throughout the 1980s with arthouse films which achieved critical attention and modest commercial success.Weinstein and Miramax Films gained wider attention in 1988 with the release of Errol Morris' documentary The Thin Blue Line, which detailed the struggle of Randall Dale Adams, a wrongfully convicted inmate sentenced to death row. The publicity that soon surrounded the case resulted in Adams' release and nationwide publicity for Miramax Films. In 1989, their successful launch release of Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies, and Videotape propelled Miramax Films to become the most successful independent studio in America.
In 1989, Miramax Films also released two arthouse films, Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and director Pedro Almodóvar's film Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, both of which received an X-rating from the MPAA rating board, effectively stopping nationwide release for these films. Weinstein sued the MPAA over the rating system. His lawsuit was later thrown out, but the MPAA introduced the NC-17 rating two months later.
1990s–2004: Further success, Disney ownership deal
Miramax Films continued to grow its library of films and directors until, in 1993, after the success of The Crying Game, Disney offered the Weinsteins $80 million for ownership of Miramax Films. The brothers agreed to the deal which in turn cemented their Hollywood clout and also ensured that they would remain at the head of their company. The following year, Miramax Films released its first blockbuster, Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, and distributed the popular independent film Clerks.Miramax Films won its first Academy Award for Best Picture in 1997 with the victory of The English Patient. Pulp Fiction was nominated in 1995 but lost to Forrest Gump. This started a string of critical successes that included Good Will Hunting and Shakespeare in Love, with both films receiving several awards, including numerous Academy Awards.
2005–2017: The Weinstein Company
On September 30, 2005, the Weinstein brothers left Miramax Films to form their own production company, The Weinstein Company, with several other media executives, directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, and Colin Vaines, who had successfully run the production department at Miramax Films for 10 years. In February 2011, filmmaker Michael Moore took legal action against the Weinstein brothers, claiming they owed him $2.7 million in profits for his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which he said were denied to him by "Hollywood accounting tricks." In February 2012, Moore dropped the lawsuit for an undisclosed settlement.Weinstein was thanked or praised in 34 Academy Award acceptance speeches—as many times as God, and second only to Steven Spielberg, as found by an analysis of speeches made between 1966 and 2016.
On October 8, 2017, Harvey Weinstein was fired from TWC after a list of sexual abuse charges was released to the press. After months of unsuccessful attempts to sell the company or its library, TWC filed for bankruptcy, with Lantern Entertainment subsequently purchasing all assets in 2018. The company was shut down on July 16, 2018, and its website sometime thereafter.
While lauded for opening up the independent film market and making it financially viable, Weinstein has been criticized for the techniques he applied in his business dealings. Peter Biskind's book Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film denounced Miramax's release history and editing of arthouse films. For example, the book states that 54 had been originally made as an arthouse film but, after Ryan Phillippe's sudden rise to stardom, Weinstein forced director Mark Christopher to re-edit and re-shoot the film to make it more mainstream.
Weinstein re-edited several Asian films and dubbed them in English. Weinstein tried to release the English-dubbed versions of Shaolin Soccer and Hero in the United States theatrically, but they scored badly in test screenings, leading Weinstein to release the films in United States cinemas in their original language. Furthermore, Weinstein re-edited 1993 Cannes Palme d'Or winner Farewell My Concubine for American theatrical release; 1993 Cannes jury head Louis Malle was furious. "The film we admired so much in Cannes is not the film seen in this country, which is twenty minutes shorter—but it seems longer, because it doesn't make any sense", complained Malle.
When Weinstein was charged with handling the American release of Princess Mononoke, director Hayao Miyazaki was reported to have sent him a samurai sword in the mail. Attached to the blade was a stark message: "No cuts." Miyazaki commented on the incident: "Actually, my producer did that. Although I did go to New York to meet this man, this Harvey Weinstein, and I was bombarded with this aggressive attack, all these demands for cuts. I defeated him." Weinstein and his brother Bob have also been criticized for altering the vision of foreign filmmakers hired to create movies for Miramax, such as on the 1997 projects Mimic and Nightwatch. Weinstein has always insisted that such changes were done in the interest of creating the most financially viable film. "I'm not cutting for fun," he said in an interview. "I'm cutting for the shit to work. All my life I served one master: the film. I love movies."
Another example cited by Biskind was Phillip Noyce's The Quiet American, the release of which Weinstein delayed following the September 11 attacks owing to audience reaction in test screenings to the film's critical tone toward past U.S. foreign policy. After being told the film would go straight to video, Noyce planned to screen the film at the Toronto International Film Festival in order to mobilize critics to pressure Miramax to release it theatrically. Weinstein decided to screen the film at the festival only after he was lobbied by star Michael Caine, who threatened to boycott publicity for another film he had made for Miramax. The Quiet American received mostly positive reviews at the festival, and Miramax eventually released the film theatrically. However, it was alleged that Miramax did not make a major effort to promote the film for Academy Award consideration, though Caine was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.
Weinstein acquired a reputation for ruthlessness and fits of anger. According to Biskind, Weinstein once put a New York Observer reporter in a headlock while throwing him out of a party. On another occasion, Weinstein yelled at director Julie Taymor and her husband during a disagreement over a test screening of her movie Frida, saying to Taymor, "You are the most arrogant person I have ever met!" and to her husband, film composer Elliot Goldenthal, "I don't like the look on your face. Why don't you defend your wife, so I can beat the shit out of you?"
In a 2004 New York magazine article, Weinstein appeared somewhat repentant for his often aggressive discussions with directors and producers. However, a Newsweek story on October 13, 2008, criticized Weinstein, who was accused of "hassling Sydney Pollack on his deathbed" about the release of the film The Reader. After Weinstein offered $1 million to charity if the accusation could be proven, journalist Nikki Finke published an email sent by Scott Rudin on August 22 asserting that Weinstein "harassed" Anthony Minghella's widow and a bedridden Pollack until Pollack's family asked him to stop.
In September 2009, Weinstein publicly voiced opposition to efforts to extradite Roman Polanski from Switzerland to the U.S. regarding a 1977 charge that he had drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl, to which Polanski pleaded guilty before fleeing the country. Weinstein, whose company distributed Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, a film about the Polanski case, questioned whether Polanski committed any crime, prompting Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley to insist that Polanski's guilty plea indicated that his action was a crime, and that several other serious charges were pending.