The world could soon be crashing down around Harvey And Bob Weinstein, as it’s been reported that their company, The Weinstein Company, is so cash strapped that it may not even be able to afford to market the upcoming Tarantino film, Inglourious Basterds. It was announced last week that analysts had been brought in to restructure the struggling business, but things may be even more desperate than they first appeared.
It’s now being said that the only way the company can afford to release Basterds is by reaching out to Universal, who own the international right to the film, to see if they’ll help with US promotion of the new Tararantino flick.
The company always had a lot riding on Basterds, with many saying it desperately needs the movie to be a major hit if it has any hopes of of survival, but it now looks like the company may have run out of cash and doesn’t have the $30 million needed to promote the film.
The company’s problems intensified after Basterds got a lukewarm response at Cannes, suggesting the film may turn out to be a dud at the box office. Tarantino went off to re-edit the film, with some suggesting he was going to make it longer, but it’s now been rumoured that Harvey Weinsten is heavily leaning on the director to lop off 40 minutes and bring the movie in under two hours (which is generally seen as being a more commercial length). The Weinsteins problem here is that they’re notorious for yanking bits out of films to dasatrous effect, and also that Tarantino’s contract says he gets final cut as long as the movie is less than two hours 46 minutes, so he doesn’t have to cut anything he doesn’t want to.
If The Weinstein Company does collapse, it’ll put a lot of high profile projects in jeopardy, such as Shanghai starring John Cusack and Rob Marshall’s new musical, Nine. However even if the worst does happen for the Weinsteins, many expect that these movies to be picked up by other companies at firesale prices and released by them.
Many have been expected The Weinstein Company to run into difficulties since the day it started up, partly because of Harvey’s terrifiying reputation (read Peter Biskind’s Down And Dirty Pictures to show you just how scary he can be – it’s quite an eye opener), and also because they tried to run it like they had Miramax, where they’d had the bottomless pockets of Disney to rely upon for the years where they didn’t have a hit. As The Weinstein Company hasn’t had a financial sizeable success in several years, it may find it difficult to continue, and Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds look set to be caught in the middle of the turmoil.