I'm not a big fan of typical commercial Hollywood type movies because I love independent, art-house and foreign films. So it was quite disappointing to learn that
Miramax, the movie studio that produced a lot of these type of films, will be shut down by Disney. Bad news!
Bob and Harvey WeinsteinBob and
Harvey Weinstein produced and/or distributed several of my favourite movies over the years. They left Miramax in 2005 but the studio still distributed great movies like No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood after that.
The Weinstein brothers launched the careers of directors like Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown) and Kevin Smith (Clerks). Other great movies were The Crying Game and Pedro Almodovar's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! They are synonymous with independent movies and thrived on producing low-budget movies which brought great financial returns. The problem though is that they started producing big budget movies later on and their initial successful business model went out the window.
There are rumours that the Weinsteins want to buy the Miramax name back from Disney. Let's hope this is true because I definitely would like to see more of these movies being released to a wider audience under the brand that has done it so successfully before.
Miramax produced/distributed other favourites of mine like Trainspotting, My Left Foot, The Piano, Il Postino, Muriel's Wedding, Beautiful Girls, Swingers, Chasing Amy, Good Will Hunting, Life is Beautiful, Amelie. Here's the full
list of films released by Miramax.
