Although it’s been its final death rattle rather than a sudden demise, Disney announced yesterday that they were closing down the legendary indie movie studio, Miramax. The LA and New York offices were closed, with the loss of 80 jobs.
Started 31 years ago by Bob and Harvey Weinstein (and named after their parents, Miriam and Max), through the 80s and particularly the early 90s, the company was at the vanguard of independent film.
With the likes of Pulp Fiction and Kevin Smith’s movies they took indie films to the mainstream. However in some respects the company was the architect of its own demise. Because of its success, Miramax was bought by Disney in 1993. Other studios, seeing the money that could be made from indie flicks at the time, quickly followed suits and bought or set up their own independent arm. As a result these films, which used to be cheap to make, suddenly became far more expensive and the profit margins shrank, which has meant that for most years Mirzmax was owned by Disney, it hasn’t made any money. By jumping on the indie bandwagon so wholeheartedly, Hollywood effectively priced itself out of the market, and since then it’s all been downhil for Miramax and the other studios’ attempts to run their own independent labels.
The Weinsteins left the company in 2005, and since then Miramax has been on a long, slow, march into oblivion. Following the Weinstein’s departure, Disney cut back the number of films Miramax could make, and the profile and commercial possibilities of the movies it did produce were limited. The company survived while Dick Cook ran Disney, as he beleived there was value in Miramax as a prestige division, even if it didn’t make lots of cash. However with Dick Cook now gone and new head-honcho Rick Ross obviously not such a big fan of the Miramax name, in the last couple of months the company was first made smaller, before being effectively closed down yesterday.
However there’s still a chance the Miramax name will live on. The Weinstein Brothers have always wanted to keep the name, but when they tried to buy it from Disney a couple of years ago, they were told they’d have to purchase the entire mini-studio kit and kaboodle, and pay a drastically overvalued $1.5 billion for it. However they may now be able to get the name for a firesale price.
The closing of Miramax leaves six films the company was producing in Limbo. Although they could still come out through Disney, at the moment their fates are unknown. It’s all another sign that while Independent film had a huge boost in the 1990s when the studios all wanted a piece of the pie, those days are long gone, and Hollywood is now far less interested. (Source: The Wrap)