It’s been a slow death, but Miramax dies on Thursday.

What has come of things ... Miramax has one of the films I produced 9 years ago (Now You Know) with Keven Smith and Jeff Anderson ... I wonder what ever happen with my points ...? Oh well .. it was fun. RIP Miramax.

Jean-Luc Martin

The New York and Los Angeles offices of the arthouse movie studio owned by Disney will close.
Eighty people will lose their jobs. The six movies waiting distribution -- "Last Night," "The Debt," "The Tempest” among them -- will be shelved, to gather dust, or win a tepid release.
It’s not clear that anyone at the studio will care.
But a lot of other people around the movie business mourned the impending loss of a label that once set the bar for taste and artistry. (Update Thursday: A Disney spokeswoman called to protest that Miramax is not 'dead.' "Miramax will consoldiate its operations within Walt Disney Studios, and will be releasing a smaller number of films than in previous years. But it will continue to operate within the Walt Disney Studios," she said.)

Over 31 years, the movie company that for most of its existence was led by founders Harvey and Bob Weinstein brought the public enduring stories that plumbed the depths of human emotion (“My Left Foot”) and pushed the boundaries of cultural barriers (“Reservoir Dogs”).
When we think of the movies that defined the latter part of the 20th century -- the movies that mattered, that stories that hit pop culture like a hammer and left a dent -- more often than not they came from Miramax.
“The Piano.” “Pulp Fiction.” “Sex, Lies and Videotape.” “Clerks.” “The English Patient.” (See slideshow.)
All too often, we may find ourselves saying: Why doesn’t Hollywood make those movies anymore?
Maybe the movie industry doesn’t know how to. Miramax, for well over a decade, was something special.
“Miramax wasn't just a bad-boy clubhouse, it was a 20th century Olympus,” filmmaker Kevin Smith wrote to TheWrap. “Throw a can of Diet Coke and you hit a modern-day deity. And for one brief, shining moment, it was an age of magic and wonders.” (Read Kevin Smith's full Hollyblog.)
With these in the vault: “Shakespeare in Love” (Oscar: Gwyneth Paltrow). “The Crying Game” (Oscar, Neil Jordan). “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (5 noms). “Chicago” (6 Oscar wins).
“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, lamenting the closure.
There were lots of overambitious flops, or movies that tried too hard -- “The Aviator.” “The Shipping News.” “The Four Feathers.” “Cold Mountain.”
But there was also lots of plain audacious filmmaking, movies that nobody else would dare make, much less ride to awards glory: “Kill Bill I and II.” “The Ciderhouse Rules.” “Good Will Hunting.” “Swingers.”
The story of Miramax has been told and retold: Scrappy New York brothers name the studio after their parents, wheel and deal to hold their movie company together, bully business partners, seduce filmmakers and spend loads of money on Oscar campaigns.
Then came the sale to Disney. The success, the hubris, the Oscars, the overspending. The loss of identity, the desperate attempts to reconcile with Michael Eisner followed by the bitter divorce, and the quiet takeover by Daniel Battsek.
The final chapter has been short and bitter.
Battsek was squeezed to a smaller and smaller size by Disney, despite releasing some respectable movies including “The Queen,” “Tsotsi” and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”
The studio endured endless rumors of its impending closure. On Oct. 2, Disney announced that “Miramax Films will reduce the number of films it releases annually while consolidating certain of its operations.”
Dick Cook, the former chairman of the studio, told me last summer that while reduced in size, the studio would continue.
But by year-end , Dick Cook was gone, and Rich Ross had taken over. Soon after, Daniel Battsek was gone, too.
Remained the final sweep-up -- the firing of the remnant staff as part of the Ross reboot of the larger Disney studio, focused on a digital future with great, big, global brands.
I asked Harvey Weinstein how he felt on Wednesday. He wrote:
"I'm feeling very nostalgic right now. I know the movies made on my and my brother Bob's watch will live on as well as the fantastic films made under the direction of Daniel Battsek. Miramax has some brilliant people working within the organization and I know they will go on to do great things in the industry."
The Weinsteins have tried to buy the name of their former company back. Disney has not responded. But Bob Iger has made it known that he would be willing to sell Miramax outright -- for about $1.5 billion.
Too rich for the Weinsteins, and probably anybody else.
So on Thursday, one more arthouse film outlet goes away.
Some in this business just can’t believe it.
“I refuse to believe it will go away forever,” said Amanda Lundberg of 42West, who spent eight years of her life at the company.
“I think Miramax is too strong a brand to not exist in some incarnation. Maybe not this year or in five years, but the library is huge and the brand is big. I can’t imagine it will disappear.”

AFM News 2009: Better buzz on film funding: Lending universe will expand for industry

Hello All,

I have been keeping up with AFM and after reading several articles and speaking with more than a few distributors, I truly believe that our market will get better and so will the material. Investors in general are playing more of an active role in understanding their ROI.

Have a great week!

Jean-Luc Martin


While Hollywood's prospects for foreign financing is downbeat, the situation should slowly brighten, according to film biz honchos at the American Film Market on Friday.

"A year ago, lenders were sitting on their hands," said Jason Sklar, VP of the entertainment industries group at J.P. Morgan. "The lender universe will expand in the next year or two." But, he admitted, "It's going to take some time. There are other opportunities for investors that have a higher yield for less work."

Sklar made the remarks as part of a panel at the Fairmont Hotel on financial markets and liquidity issues, sources of equity investment, tax incentives and foreign investment. About 800 attended the session, sponsored by KPMG and moderated by KPMG managing director Benson R. Berro.

His fellow panelists said the $825 million investment by India's Reliance into DreamWorks is a strong signal of the direction of investments into the U.S. film business.

"For the time being, the equity will come from emerging markets," said Emmanuel (Manny) Nunez, motion picture agent at CAA.

Nunez also noted it's unlikely that any hedge fund money will return to Hollywood any time soon, pointing out that the "perfect storm" that attracted the funds -- huge amounts of money looking for investments in an industry hungry for funds -- won't take place again.

Instead, foreign investors will have far more strategic goals, according to Adam Leipzig, president of National Geographic Films. "Non-U.S. investment is smart money, not dumb money, that's looking for companies that have a track record," he added.

Hyde Park Entertainment topper Ashok Amritraj -- who signed a $250 million deal with Abu Dhabi's production banner Imagenation last year to develop and distrib up 20 feature films over seven years -- noted that Hollywood has a poor image in terms of how it treats investors. He urged attendees to be more attentive to those bringing the funding.

"If the first one works out, that's so important, because then there's more to come," Amritraj added.

Nunez also warned that more consolidation will likely come among the Hollywood majors, pointing to declines in DVD revenues. "That's a lot of dollars that have been taken away from the bottom line," he added.

The panelists agreed that use of government incentives remains essential in financing, with Leipzig saying that's the key reason he's shot only three of his 28 films in the Los Angeles area.

Amritraj noted that incentives in Louisiana, Michigan and North Carolina were a key reason why recent Hyde Park pics have been shot in those states. And he asserted that despite budgetary pressures on governments, it's unlikely incentive programs will disappear.

Industry slowly embracing new media --- Promising gizmos banking on being biz's next killer app

Hello all!
The Digital Revolution that is changing our landscape as producers.

Jean-Luc Martin



Hollywood seems stuck in first gear when it comes to the race to embrace the Digital Revolution.

After more than a decade of dithering over how to release film and TV content over the Internet and other new-media platforms -- and how aggressively to do so -- the industry remains tentative in its approach to digital distribution.

"Studios are feeling their way through," says Rick Bolton, CEO of digital downloads company Film Fresh. "On the one hand, they have the cautionary tale of the music industry before them, and on the other, they have the relatively positive example of the TV side's relationship with iTunes. But the consumer is going to decide where this all is going, not the corporate side."

With that in mind, the brave few continue to pop up with bright ideas they hope will capture public fancy and studio support.

Take Digiboo, a business startup by home entertainment veteran Richard Cohen. Digiboo would place digital touch-screen kiosks in airports and other heavily trafficked public spaces where consumers can plug in a flash drive and instantly download movies and other content.

Discussions are under way with studios and retailers ahead of a proposed market-by-market rollout nationwide. The concept's premise is simple: Downloading movies would be more popular if the downloads didn't take so long.

Digiboo gets around that problem by storing films onsite, so the transmission is almost instantaneous.

"Digiboo's technology has taken portability and convenience to another level entirely," Cohen says. "We think this is exactly what the consumer wants and exactly what's been missing from other models."

Indeed, horror stories abound of inordinate wait times on many film downloads, and the download time for season sets of TV series can be measured in days, not hours. Meanwhile, wireless remains the key means for connecting computers to television screens when viewing downloaded content, but studios remain squeamish about security concerns.

The combination of business challenges and wary consumers has exacerbated studio executives' natural hesitancy about pushing too hard for digital schemes that could undermine traditional distribution and existing revenue models.

"Digital sucks," one industryite says. "Of all the companies doing digital distribution, only Apple is making money. The volume of business is too low, and the main reason for it is that the consumer experience is so bad."

Consumers demand lower pricing on digital content, so studios make significantly less profit per consumer transaction despite higher cost efficiencies compared with packaged-goods releasing. "So whenever I switch to digital, I better get twice the volume to stay even," the digital skeptic says.

Bolton's Film Fresh shares the downloads terrain with Apple's iTunes and CinemaNow. Film Fresh uses a DivX, iTunes a proprietary player and CinemaNow the WindowsMedia platform, with a possible addition of DivX capabilities in the offing.

Then there is digital streaming.

Essentially the digital equivalent of traditional home entertainment's rental market, there are two approaches to offering films and TV shows online: subscription- and fee-based models offered by Blockbuster, Netflix, Vudu and others, and ad-supported sites including Hulu and YouTube. YouTube still offers mostly clips of films and shows but has been negotiating for a possible move into feature content.

"There are all sorts of buzz about digital and downloading and all these things, but it's still in reality a small portion of the overall business," says Bruce Anderson, the Los Angeles-based GM of Blockbuster On Demand, which incorporates the former Movielink service acquired by the DVD-rentals giant in 2007. "From our perspective, that's a great thing. It tells us there is a great opportunity for business growth."

Digital entertainment in all forms contributes $2 billion in industry revenue, according to consensus estimates. That compares with an estimated $22 billion in rental and sales revenue of DVDs and Blu-ray Discs.

A download-vs.-streaming debate has raged for years among content companies seeking a revenue sweet spot in the digital space. But a shakeout of optimum business applications for the two approaches continues.

How's this for an experimental gambit: Mobile entertainment startup mSpot has begun streaming movies through several cell phone carriers. Content deals at launch this fall included pacts with Paramount and the Weinstein Co., and mSpot says an agreement with Universal is "pending."

Underscoring the belief that consumers care about watching more than just clips on tiny phone screens, Showtime recently launched an iPhone application through which the cable network occasionally will offer entire episodes of shows. The move continues a trend in which select episodes and occasionally newly created webisodes are used to promote key TV series.

Qualcomm has introduced a handheld device dubbed a Personal Television that syncs with FLO TV to offer content similar to its offerings via mobile carriers' AT&T and Verizon's respective Mobile Television and V Cast subscription services.

Eventually, studios may give consumers the opportunity to purchase film-viewing rights spanning all home and mobile platforms.

Disney and Sony have launched separate, multi-studio efforts to develop related technology for a possible market rollout during the next couple of years. But it's unclear how studios would price such schemes and thus impossible to know whether mass consumers will be interested.

Meanwhile, the concept of TV pay-per-view seems almost old-school compared with watching movies on computers or TV shows on mobile devices. But PPV via cable and satellite providers, aka VOD, represents another still-evolving area of digital distribution.

Several studios allow their titles to be distributed via VOD simultaneously with release on DVD and Blu-ray. But don't expect the simultaneous release of major movies on VOD and in theaters for years to come as the fear of revenue cannibalization and content piracy have executives clinging to the status quo.

Theatrical revenue is a key consideration, but the packaged-goods side of the home entertainment business is another area where caution is the watchword.

Heck, "Titanic" isn't even available on Blu-ray yet. Executives deem the current installed base of Blu-ray players too small to warrant its HD debut until more consumers embrace the format.

The situation makes it worth recalling: Survivors of the music biz also know a thing or two about the perils of hidden icebergs.

Some studios stop abiding by the laws, and are better for it (Indie Produced Films)

With this weekend seeing the “Paranormal Activity” train roll on and “Law Abiding Citizen” overperforming for Overture, a curious mini-trend is taking hold: studios are going into the finished-film rough and coming out with gems.

Or, put another way, studios are creating hits by doing exactly the opposite of what their machinery is designed to do: develop from within.

Both Paramount and Overture, the respective distributors behind those two weekend winners, acquired rights to their  films after the pics were pretty much through production by their indie producers (at a fraction of the price than it would have cost to make them). With “District 9,” the in-production diamond Sony unearthed last year and turned into $100+ million in boxoffice bling, that means three of the biggest sleepers of the year were all developed outside the studio system and only released within it.

That may not seem like a tectonic shift. But with every passing weekend at the box-office — a bargain acquisition breaks out here, a studio-developed pic flops there — the balance of power moves slightly away from the development world and toward acquisitions and marketing.

That balance will never move too far in the other direction; studios still have plenty of investment in and infrastructure for development. But with this hat trick, it’s now fair to ask if there’s at least a new model creeping in to rival the old one, a model in which development and production are, in essence, outsourced.

The move to acquire in-production and finished pics, after all, dovetails nicely with a few other studio trends. The biggies around town are already cutting back on development, as they slash budgets, producer deals, blind writer deals, etc.

There is, at the same time, a sudden abundance of available commercial pics, thanks to a shift on the independent financing side. Over the past year there have been a number of financiers willing to fund low-budget genre movies instead of what they once happily financed — star-driven dramatic ones.

In other words, there’s a lot more out there that might interest the studios than there was even a year ago.

Maybe most importantly, at a time when penny-pinching studios are trying, for better or worse, to stamp the risk out of the business (see under: The Remake Craze), the opportunity to watch a film before one decides to invest in it may be most appealing of all. And if that pic is a star-less one with a good concept — meaning it’s marketable but can be bought at a price — all the better.

There’s no guarantee that any of the other titles studios have bought or will buy will break out similarly; “Paranormal Activity,” with a low budget even by low-budget standards, is certainly an anomaly.

But if nothing else, the weekend shows that it may be the right time to start handicapping other prospects, whether it’s the dark superhero high-school tale “Kick-Ass” (acquired for a few million by Lionsgate several months ago, after it was finished), the deluded superhero tale “Defendor” (acquired by Sony, “District 9″ style, for a similarly low price out of Toronto), or the high-concept underwater adventure “Sanctum” (which Relativity and Universal teamed to buy for just above $10m, and which as a 3D pic with Jim Cameron’s imprimatur, has many of the right earmarks).

One consequence of all this is that the upcoming American Film Market, where Sony of course picked up “District 9″ last year, may have a different feel. The Santa Monica gathering usually conjures as much excitement as a trip to a used-car dealership. This year may up the intrigue level.

More broadly, with all the other changes creasing the movie business, you can add this wrinkle. Indies are now making commercial movies, and the commercial world is following an indie approach. Things truly are paranormal.