Dimension Dying a Slow Death? Chaos at the Studio!
Steve Barton
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It looks like a very unhappy Halloween for Bob and Harvey Weinstein and everyone over at Dimension. It seems the studio is bleeding out and not in the fun way that we’re used to seeing up on the big screen.
Deadline Hollywood reported today that the Hong Kong division of Bob and Harvey’s company closed shop and the UK office is now down to one employee. How could this happen? Simply put, they’re running out of money and doing so quickly.
From the Article:
“Even though Inglourious Basterds has been doing better than expected at the box office, TWC still has to share the worldwide revenues 50-50 with Universal. At one point, Uni was nervous whether The Weinstein Company even had the $30M necessary to adequately release IB domestically because TWC had depleted all its cash reserves, taken out a $75M bridge loan from Ziff Brothers Investment, and put all of its other movie releases on hold. True, Basterds gave Quentin Tarantino his biggest opening ever, thus erasing Harv’s fears this would be a Grindhouse-like flop. But Basterds had a negative cost of $72M and a humongous first-dollar gross participation — as much as 25% — for Tarantino and Brad Pitt.
Then there’s The Weinstein Company’s release of its 100%–owned Halloween II one week later. The first in the Rob Zombie rebooted franchise opened with a solid $26.3M weekend back on August 31, 2007 — promising a newly invigorated franchise. Didn’t happen. Last weekend, Zombie’s fan-repelling Halloween II managed only a $16.3M debut weekend, which was a huge disappointment. Not just to Harv, but to others. Because several TWC filmmakers were told that the Weinsteins have to see how Halloween II opens before they decide how many movies they can open for the rest of 2009.”
So what does this mean for the rest of their film slate, including Aja’s much anticipated Piranha 3D and the proposed fourth entry in the Scream franchise? To quote the “new” Loomis from Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake …
“I don’t know, but it can’t be good.”
Stay tuned.
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