The Weinstein Company was an American film studio, founded by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein in 2005 after the pair left the then-Disney-owned Miramax Films. The Dimension Films label of Miramax followed the brothers to their new company.
Much like Miramax, the company was infamous for often taking creative control away from directors, delaying films, giving them the Invisible Advertising treatment, and releasing mostly flops (though their fortunes later improved with the back-to-back Best Picture winners The King's Speech and The Artist). Their films would find some success on home video, thanks to a much advertised exclusive rental agreement with Blockbuster Video in the mid-to-late 2000s, though the rental chain would fold a few years later. Their biggest success was Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, released in 2012.
TWC's sub-labels included the aforementioned Dimension Films (for B-movie fare) and Radius (for fare given theatrical and VOD releases, similar to Magnolia Pictures and IFC Films).
That probably isn't what you know them for, though.
In October of 2017, a pair of exposés in The New York Times and The New Yorker exposed Harvey's extensive history of sexual misconduct, ranging from verbal harassment to violent rape to blackmail, which had gone on for his entire career. Though he'd been accused of aggressive behavior and even bullying in the past, these articles swiftly changed Harvey's public perception from that of a relatively harmless – if meddlesome and sleazy – executive to a full-fledged sexual predator, making his very name shorthand for sexual rapacity in show business. He was immediately fired from the company, permanently ending his career in film, and the resulting scandal kickstarted the #MeToo movement, which encouraged victims of harassment and assault to call for justice against their high-profile abusers, creating a domino effect of several other powerful men in Hollywood and various other major professions (such as Kevin Spacey, Bryan Singer, Russell Simmons, Matt Lauer, Leslie Moonves, and John Kricfalusi, just to name a few) having their careers similarly permanently soured. In May of 2018, Harvey was arrested and charged with rape. In two separate trials held in New York and Los Angeles (the first in February of 2020, the second in October of 2022), he was convicted of four counts of rape and one count of sexual assault. He was sentenced to a total of 39 years in prison.note
Following Harvey's fall from grace, TWC would declare bankruptcy after sales talks fell through with potential buyers. In 2018, the company declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy and was purchased by Lantern Capital and subsequently renamed Lantern Entertainment. A year later, Lantern folded their TWC assets into Spyglass Media Group (the revived Spyglass Entertainment), with Warner Bros. acquiring a minority stake. Bob remains in comparatively better standing thus far and has moved on to create his own production company, Watch This Entertainment. Lionsgate is the current distributor of The Weinstein Company's library.
Films released by The Weinstein Company:
- All Good Things
- Arthur and the Invisibles
- The Artist
- The Art of the Steal
- August: Osage County
- Awake (2007)
- Begin Again
- Big Eyes
- Blue Valentine
- Bobby
- Brooklyn Rules
- The Butler
- Butter
- Capitalism: A Love Story
- Carol
- Cassandra's Dream
- Clerks II
- Doogal
- Django Unchained
- Escape from Planet Earth
- Factory Girl
- Fanboys
- Fruitvale Station
- The Giver
- Hands of Stone
- The Hateful Eight
- Hoodwinked!
- I Don't Know How She Does It
- The Imitation Game
- I'm Not There
- Inglourious Basterds
- The Iron Lady
- I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
- Jane Got a Gun
- Killing Them Softly
- Killshot
- The King's Speech
- Lawless
- Leo the Lion
- The Libertine
- The Master
- The Matador
- Mrs Henderson Presents
- My Week with Marilyn
- The Nanny Diaries
- No Escape
- Our Idiot Brother
- Outlander
- Paddington
- Philomena
- The Reader
- Silver Linings Playbook
- A Single Man
- Snowpiercer
- Southpaw
- St Vincent
- Sing Street
- Suite Française
- The Three Robbers
- TMNT
- Transamerica
- Tulip Fever (final theatrical release)
- Vicky Cristina Barcelona
- Wind River
