Miramax Gets the Axe
The Disney owned film production & distribution company Miramax Films officially ceased operations today. The producer/distributor’s New York and Los Angeles offices close today, leaving 80 former staffer unemployed and six completed films in distribution limbo. The storied 31 year old distributor is remembered for financing and distributing acclaimed films including Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill I and II, Sex, Lies and Videotape, The Piano, The English Patient, The Crying Game, Good Will Hunting, and Chicago.
“If there was any company that contributed more to the shaping of a generation and a sensibility — I don’t know it,†said veteran publicist Fredell Pogodin.
Source: The Wrap
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Ouch. Another one bites the dust. They distributed some pretty good anime over the years… I remember their limited release of PRINCESS MONONOKE almost ten years ago.
Aaron: Yes, and screwed it over, much like most of their Asian films. As far as I’m concerned, good riddance, and I hope TWC follows.
@GATS
How did Miramax screw over the limited theatrical release of Princess Mononoke? I’m only familiar with the home video release, which seemed just fine to me. What did they do wrong, Dub it?
From what I hear, the Weinsteins, who founded and ran Miramax until they left to create The Weinstein Company in 2005, are trying to get back the rights to the name.
kampfer: The fact that they gave it a limited release in the first place. The Weinsteins like “tweaking” films which they hate[usually of the Asian variety] in front of test audiences, so the scores end up being lower than one would expect. And if you compare Mononoke’s dub with the Disney dubs, you definitely see a world of difference between the two, with Mononoke being the worst of the bunch, partly because of Gaiman’s half-assed scriptment, and partly because, outside Billy “Dr. Manhattan” Crudup, the cast does not match the characters. Plus, the film got little-to-no advertising, and bombed solely because no one even heard of it playing anywhere.
Then they tried to screw us out of a Japanese language track for the DVD. And when we only finally got it, after a massive fan out-cry. Plus, even though it ended up being one of the better-selling newer DVDs of that era, they didn’t learn shit from that experience, and continued to hack and release dub-only versions of Asian movies on DVD, while betting their earnings on garbage like My Baby’s Daddy that they were forced out of their own company. Now they’re finally being outed for the financial frauds they’ve been all the time, since the Disney money’s what kept them afloat most of the time-and they’d have died out a long time ago, otherwise, due to their generally poor choices.