The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company, LLC was an American independent film production and distribution company, which was founded in New York City by Bob and Harvey Weinstein on March 10, 2005. TWC was one of the largest mini-major film studios in North America. However, the firing of Harvey Weinstein following allegations of sexual harassment and rape against him, as well as financial troubles that followed, led to the company's decline. The studio eventually declared bankruptcy in February 2018, with independent studio Lantern Entertainment acquiring a majority of its film library and assets. Co-founder and chief executive Bob Weinstein previously owned a small stake in the company.
The company fired joint founder and chief executive Harvey Weinstein in October 2017, after more than 100 women accused him of sexual harassment, abuse, assault, and rape.
On February 26, 2018, the Weinstein Company announced in a statement that it would declare bankruptcy following the collapse of a buyout deal with an investor group led by Maria Contreras-Sweet. However, the TWC board and the investor group confirmed on March 1, 2018, that they had reached a deal in which TWC would sell all of its assets for US$500 million. On March 6, 2018, the acquisition deal collapsed again after the studio had an extra debt of US$50 million revealed. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 19, 2018. The company filed for liquidation, and on May 1, 2018, Lantern Capital emerged as the winner of the studio's bankruptcy auction and liquidation sale.
History
Early years
The Weinstein Company was founded on March 10, 2005, and officially launched that October, following the departure of Harvey and Bob Weinstein from Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979, and sold to the Walt Disney Company on June 30, 1993. The Weinsteins retained ownership of the Dimension Films label. Their first releases in 2005 included the dramatic thriller Derailed, the offbeat comedy-drama Transamerica the animated family film Hoodwinked, the World War II–era comedy-drama Mrs Henderson Presents, and the caper comedy The Matador.In February 2006, TWC announced a distribution pact with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. MGM distributed the product domestically in theatres, while TWC retained long-term ownership of their product. On July 13, 2006, the Weinsteins and Robert L. Johnson announced the creation of a joint venture studio titled Our Stories Films, which distributed African-American-oriented films. On November 17, 2006, TWC announced a three-year deal with Blockbuster Video to give Blockbuster exclusive rights for rentals starting on January 1, 2007. However, under the First Sale Doctrine of United States copyright law, other rental companies are able to rent copies of the company's movies purchased at retail.
TWC is the co-producer, along with Miramax, of the Lifetime reality series Project Runway, which for its first five seasons aired on Bravo. The series won a Peabody Award in 2007. On May 23, 2007, TWC announced the launch of three new direct-to-video labels: the Miriam Collection, Kaleidoscope TWC, and Dimension Extreme.
On February 8, 2008, TWC launched a distributor, Third Rail Releasing, that released films aimed mainly at the home video market. On September 25, 2008, TWC ended its three-year distribution pact with MGM three months before the December 31 end date. This happened in part because TWC had struck a television output deal with Showtime, though not through MGM's output deal with them. During the span of their pact, TWC paid for marketing and prints, while MGM received a distribution fee for booking theatres.
Financial restructuring
On June 5, 2009, TWC announced the hiring of a financial adviser to restructure the finances of the company. After July 2009, many layoffs occurred at TWC, and the release dates of some films were pushed back. On September 14, 2009, TWC sold its stake in Genius Products, which served as TWC's home video distributor from 2006 to 2009. Genius, however, had announced to exit the home video distribution business and the DVD rights that were distributed by Genius were sold to Vivendi Entertainment. TWC also struck a deal with Vivendi. The same year, it won a Peabody Award for The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.On January 13, 2010, TWC announced more layoffs at the company after the box office failure of Nine. On February 21, 2010, TWC made a deal with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment releasing the DVDs through Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group. Bob and Harvey Weinstein attempted to buy back Miramax Films from Disney in 2010, but the attempt was unsuccessful.
An ownership interest in TWC's library, at that point consisting of 200 titles, was sold off to Goldman Sachs and Assured Guaranty in 2010. The sale freed TWC from bankruptcy, and Goldman Sachs' stake in the library was purchased by AMC Networks in 2015. According to Deadline Hollywood: "The library will revert to the Weinstein Company itself when the remaining debt has been paid off by the films in question."
On January 4, 2011, TWC agreed to acquire a 25% stake in Starz Media. Because of this, Starz Media subsidiary Anchor Bay Entertainment became the home video distributor for all TWC films. On February 3, 2011, the Weinsteins extracted a $75 million consolation prize from their former parent company, Disney, thus improving their filmmaking careers. As a result, Disney handed over its 50% stake in Project Runway, and reduced its share in four jointly owned films, including Scary Movie and Spy Kids, from 50% to 5%. On February 27, 2011, TWC-distributed film The King's Speech brought to the company their first Academy Award for Best Picture at the 83rd Academy Awards, after the brothers' last Best Picture Oscar winner Chicago had won in 2002 when Bob and Harvey Weinstein were at Miramax Films, controlled by then corporate owner Disney. Their previous Best Picture nominees for TWC were 2008's The Reader and 2009's Inglourious Basterds, the latter film a co-production with Universal Pictures and A Band Apart. On March 25, 2011, the company formed a video game division named TWC Games. TWC Games formed a strategic consultancy with Beefy Media, a video game production company, to foster relationships with publishers and create high-quality games.
On February 26, 2012, after TWC's purchase of the rights to release Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist in the United States, which won the prestigious Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival for Jean Dujardin, The Artist won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. This was the second consecutive Oscar for Best Picture awarded to the Weinstein Company. The last independent mini-major to win back-to-back Oscars for Best Picture was Orion Pictures for their films Dances with Wolves in 1990 and The Silence of the Lambs in 1991.
In August 2012, Mark Gooder, then CEO of the Mel Gibson-Bruce Davey company Icon Productions, was appointed president of acquisitions and Australian operations for TWC. In this role he would be responsible for bringing in projects from scripts through finished films, and as part of the role would attend film markets and festivals.
TWC distributed films on multiple formats through its Radius-TWC brand. On September 13, 2013, Bob and Harvey Weinstein launched the TWC-Dimension label to distribute projects of mutual interest They first released the TWC-Dimension label on Paddington on January 16, 2015.
On November 4, 2013, TWC announced they had picked up U.S. distribution rights to the British drama series Peaky Blinders from Endemol.
On December 16, 2013, Miramax and TWC entered a 20-year joint-venture agreement to develop and produce films, television series, and stage shows. The deal would allow the Weinsteins to exploit the 700-film Miramax library. Sequels to Rounders and Shakespeare in Love were among the films being developed under this new deal, and series based on Good Will Hunting and Flirting with Disaster were being planned as well. Other developments included a Noah Hawley-written film titled The Alibi, and an adaptation of Liz Jensen's novel The 9th Life of Louis Drax, that late filmmakers Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack intended to make. Miramax would put up the financing and handle international sales while the Weinstein Company would develop the projects and distribute the titles domestically.
On May 7, 2014, TWC announced a multi-year, multi-picture co-financing deal with Worldview Entertainment. However, Worldview only invested in the period drama Tulip Fever due to the departure of CEO Christopher Woodrow.
In April 2015, the Weinstein Company was closing in on a deal to sell its television division to British network ITV for $950 million, but the deal was grounded in May. That same year, the company announced that around 40–50 layoffs would occur due to the box office failure of the comedy-drama Burnt among other factors. Shortly after, TWC announced they would no longer release the normal 18 films per year; instead, the company would release 8–10 films per year and would make fewer acquisitions at film festivals.
On July 31, 2015, TWC COO and president David Glasser briefly left the company amid a string of company exits, but then in September, he rejoined the company and planned to stay as its COO and president until 2018. Harvey Weinstein also openly expressed interest in reacquiring Miramax and merging the film and television libraries of both companies when the latter went up for sale in July. On February 23, 2016, TWC decided to put its film library of 520 titles as well as a majority stake in its television division up for sale, and later signed investment banks Moelis & Company and Thomas Dey's ACF Investment Bank to handle the television sale by looking for strategic investors. Meanwhile, in March, Miramax had been acquired by BeIN Media Group, but in a later July interview, however, Weinstein said that he was still interested in merging TWC with Miramax and combining the two companies' libraries in order to build a larger film library, even after the BeIN acquisition. On June 21, 2016, James L. Dolan exited TWC's board of directors and was replaced by hedge fund billionaire and Milwaukee Bucks co-owner Marc Lasry. Later, on August 1, Opus Bank's media and entertainment banking division funded a $400 million credit facility into TWC.
On August 18, 2017, TWC launched Mizchief, a film label dedicated to producing animated films. When Harvey Weinstein, co-founder of TWC, was explaining the origin of the name of Mizchief, he said that it was based on how one of his kids pronounced the word, "Mischief". The only film to be released under the label was the French-Canadian animated film Leap!, released on August 25, 2017.