Harvey’s Sundance Shopping Spree

In case you have not noticed, Harvey Weinstein is back. A year after a bruising and ultimately unsuccessful fight with Disney to regain control of Miramax, the celebrated company he and his brother Bob founded in the 1980s, Harvey is very much the king of the walk again, with three of the biggest indie films of the season cleaning up in awards season and at the box office. THE ARTIST, MY WEEK WITH MARILYN and THE IRON LADY are adding mucho prestige and money to the Weinstein coffers, so the rumors are rampant that Harvey will be on a shopping spree later this week as the Sundance Film Festival opens its pearly gates. Of course, the Weinsteins were Sundance supremos in the 1990s, buying many films and promoting as many in the environs of Park City. After they lost control of Miramax, the first few years of The Weinstein Company were lean ones indeed, with the real money coming in from Bob’s Millenium Pictures genre unit of low budget horror, action and sci fi films. However, since last year’s BLUE VALENTINE, Weinstein is viewed once again as an awards season player and he may just orchestrate a Best Film Oscar win for THE ARTIST that will cap that film’s unusual journey from Cannes to Hollywood. The question remains whether there are enough high profile films at Sundance with the wide appeal of his current slate for Harvey to choose from. Look to new Weinstein Company exec Dylan Sellers, who now oversees both the production and acquisitions arm of the company, to work with Harvey on the possible acquisitions of such buzzed about titles as ARBITRAGE, the financial collapse drama starring Richard Gere;  BACHELORETTE, being touted as the indie BRIDESMAIDS; the Stephen Frears dramedy LAY THE BET starring Bruce Willis, Rebecca Hall and Catherine Zeta-Jones; and the literary drama THE WORDS starring Bradley Cooper, Dennis Quaid, Jeremy Irons and Zoe Saldana. Go, Harvey go……spend, Harvey, spend.

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