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How does Miramax manage to work with
the hottest A-list directors and have a piece of the most promising
literary projects? By having a gift for dealing with talent, and
a talent for making the deal.
After Shakespeare in Love won the
1998 Best Picture Oscar, John Madden found himself on a roll. The
British director didn’t want to spend the next couple of years waiting
around for his next film to go into production. Two projects he
had planned to direct for Miramax Films—Silk, about an 1860s
silkworm merchant, and St. Agnes’ Stand, a western survival
tale—weren’t ready, and little else interested Madden. Then he read
Hossein Amini’s screenplay Shanghai.
Like Shakespeare, it was a period
romance—this time set in China on the eve of Pearl Harbor—but for
Madden, it had another obvious strength: As a high-profile project
at Sony’s Columbia Pictures, Shanghai had the potential for
superstar casting, which would offer him a classy entrance into
the studio major leagues. Columbia and producer Phoenix Pictures
expressed eagerness to work with Madden on the film, and the parties
explored signing a deal. Mel Gibson surfaced as a possible lead,
and the planets started to align—that is, until Madden’s relationship
with Harvey Weinstein, cochairman of Disney-owned Miramax, upset
the negotiations.
Prior to Shakespeare, which producer
Weinstein had personally handed to Madden, and Mrs. Brown,
which was an art-house hit for Miramax, the director’s career was
largely unremarkable. His previous two features, Golden Gate
and Ethan Frome, had grossed a mere $700,000 combined. Following
Mrs. Brown, a thankful Madden promised Weinstein two of his
next three films, but after Miramax’s zealous Academy Award campaign
turned Shakespeare into a $100 million blockbuster, Madden
renegotiated his deal: His directing fees would go up and he would
have final cut, but in exchange, he guaranteed Weinstein both of
his next two movies—with no escape clause. Shanghai now seemed
like it would be one of those titles, and in return for Madden’s
services, Weinstein went to Columbia, seeking a share of the film’s
distribution rights.
The only problem: Sony Pictures Entertainment
chairman-CEO John Calley wasn’t dealing. Unlike other studios, which
often seek to sell off a share—and some of the financial risk—of
expensive projects, Sony prefers to buy such rights. (Sony’s taking
a piece of Universal Pictures’ Erin Brockovich is an example.)
Calley wanted to keep all of Shanghai for Sony and Phoenix,
even if the price was losing Madden, the director of choice. “Sony
didn’t want Harvey,” Phoenix chairman-CEO Mike Medavoy says. After
a several-month-long impasse, Mike Newell (Donnie Brasco)
was chosen to replace Madden as Shanghai’s director. Yet
due to Harvey Weinstein’s continued enthusiasm for the project,
Miramax, and not Sony, may wind up partnering on the film.
Miramax did not invent the contract system.
Movie studios have drawn up exclusive deals with top talent ever
since Carl Laemmle put silent star Florence Lawrence under contract
in 1910. The practice of keeping filmmakers—directors, producers,
writers, stars, cameramen, designers, and all the featured players—under
contract was pervasive in Hollywood until the 1950s, when the studios,
severed from their theater chains by an antitrust decision and rapidly
losing audiences to television, gave up control. Today, most of
the name talent in the movies resemble the free agents of major-league
sports, choosing the best jobs for themselves and demanding whatever
salaries the market will bear.
As the cost of making movies has soared
into the hundreds of millions, studio executives have sought ways
to lessen the risk of doing business. One solution has been the
coproduction, in which two studios share the cost of a film and
divide up the territories (typically, foreign and domestic) in which
it is released. This increasingly popular tactic has often been
the only way to launch risky megabudget projects like Titanic,
for which Paramount Pictures helped defray Twentieth Century Fox’s
massive production costs in exchange for the right to release the
film domestically.
Miramax, which only recently expanded beyond
the art-house market, has given the coproduction game a different
twist. Instead of simply ponying up some of the money for a studio
movie and sharing the spoils, Miramax has been using its relationships
with filmmakers as a wedge to enter into cofinancing deals. Some
say the strategy borders on bullying, but the end product is indisputable:
a coproduction windfall for Miramax.
Clearly, Weinstein has an eye for talent.
In 1996, when he offered a whopping $10 million for B-list actor
Billy Bob Thornton’s directorial debut, Sling Blade, even
some Miramax executives thought Weinstein’s passion for the film
was superseding his business sense. Little note was taken that as
part of the sale, Thornton agreed to make three more Miramax movies.
The company’s creative marketing campaign then managed to turn Thornton’s
eccentric little movie about a mentally disabled murderer into a
surprise, $24 million–grossing hit. At Oscar time, Thornton won
Best Adapted Screenplay, and Miramax scored yet again: It now had
a multipicture commitment from a newly minted A-list filmmaker.
When Thornton signed on to direct All the Pretty Horses for
Columbia, Miramax used its Thornton relationship to get the foreign
distribution rights. Months later, Weinstein then maneuvered to
take domestic rights instead—by taking advantage of Columbia’s inability
to persuade Thornton to cut the epic-length film, and the studio’s
nervousness over its ability to market the literary cowboy tale—but
only after Thornton made a written guarantee that the movie would
not exceed two hours and 15 minutes.
This happens repeatedly: Weinstein gives
an undervalued artist a break at Miramax and then cashes in when
he or she moves on to blue-chip features at the majors. Director
Lasse Hallström, for example, went from Miramax’s Oscar-winning
The Cider House Rules to the Columbia-Miramax coproduction
The Shipping News (which Columbia, already apprehensive about
the film’s commercial prospects, later sold outright to Miramax).
And Ben Affleck, who won an Oscar for coscripting Miramax’s Good
Will Hunting, will likely star in the Universal-Miramax coproduction
Cinderella Man, which Thornton might direct.
Signing directors to deals is not uncommon
among the majors (Universal has a three-year first-look pact with
Patch Adams director Tom Shadyac, and Columbia houses
Bicentennial Man’s Chris Columbus). Miramax’s wrinkle, however,
is to lock more of its filmmakers into long-term deals and then
aggressively enforce the options on their following projects. Other
studios launch careers, of course, but Miramax consistently gambles
on talent outside the commercial mainstream, inspiring loyalty—and
sometimes demanding it. According to a Miramax producer who balked
over agreeing to a multipicture pact, Weinstein demanded an explanation
for the perceived insubordination.
When director James Gray began shooting
The Yards, he owed Miramax nothing. But when he wanted three
extra days of filming, Miramax insisted he sign on for another film.
When Gray later asked for some reshoots (one day of which Gray paid
for himself), Miramax demanded yet another film. Thus, when the
movie was finally finished, Gray owed Weinstein two of his next
three movies. “But Harvey is the one guy out there willing to make
a movie like this,” Gray concedes. (Weinstein says that The Yards
went $8 million over budget, and that Gray promised the new film
willingly, as an expression of gratitude.) These com mitments might
be viewed as “encumbrances,” says ICM agent Robert Newman, who represents
several Miramax directors, but “they are certainly preferable to
being unemployed.”
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