Is Miramax Going the Disney Route? Well, Yes and No : Movies: Company known for feisty adult films opens a family division. Indie will use marketing expertise of its parent company.

Could it be that Miramax Films--the feisty independent company behind such controversial adult-oriented movies as “The Crying Game,” “sex, lies, and videotape,” “Truth or Dare” and “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!”--is shedding its edgy image and going PG?

Well, not exactly.

But in a move to augment their already successful specialty film business, company co-founding brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein decided this week to launch Miramax Family Films, which debuts Sept. 16 with the release of its first in-house produced family film, “Into the West.”

This doesn’t mean the New York-based independent, purchased four months ago by the Walt Disney Co., has any intention of abandoning the kind of provocative pictures on which it has built its name over the past years. “That ain’t ever going to happen,” Bob Weinstein said. “This is like an adjunct, an extension of the core business we already do.”

Even prior to its acquisition by the premier family brand-name studio, Miramax decided to jump on the family entertainment bandwagon in order to diversify and capitalize on what is becoming an ever-growing movie-going market. Bob Weinstein, who is spearheading the effort, stressed that Miramax is not interested in making or competing with broad-based, commercial family movies like “Home Alone,” but rather will concentrate on modestly budgeted, “high-quality, classic kind of family movies that have a smartness and intelligence to them while also being entertaining.”

The Miramax co-chairman said it plans to release one or two family films a year, each costing between $5 million and $15 million.

Its first release, “Into the West,” a $6-million Irish fable Miramax co-financed with London-based Majestic Films, will open nationwide in 600 theaters.

Further down the line, Miramax Family Films will give birth to a $15-million live-action movie version of Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 classic children’s book “A Wrinkle in Time,” which is being adapted by Linda Woolverton (“Beauty and the Beast,” “Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey”). L’Engle also wrote two sequel books, “A Wind in the Door” and “A Swiftly Tilting Planet,” which Miramax hopes will spawn a movie series, and, for the first time, put the indie in the franchise business.

Miramax will probably see the “Wrinkle” script by October with plans to start production early next year for a Christmas ’94 release. The story chronicles the adventures of a brother and sister who travel into a mystical fifth dimension to rescue their missing father--a lost NASA scientist.

Weinstein said Miramax’s initial strategy in its family film endeavor will be to cull from filmmakers with whom the company has ongoing relationships, such as Jim Sheridan, the Oscar-nominated writer-director of Miramax’s “My Left Foot” and screenwriter of “Into the West.” He noted that discussions are already under way with Sheridan about continuing the story of “Into the West” in a sequel set in America. Directed by Mike Newell (“Enchanted April”), “Into the West” follows the adventures of two young brothers from the Dublin slums who rescue a magical white horse from an evil breeder and run away to western Ireland with a $10,000 reward on their heads and police at their heels.

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In addition to “Into the West” and “Wrinkle in Time,” Weinstein said Miramax is in negotiations to adapt other family-themed literary properties.

Weinstein said the impetus for Miramax Family Films was both personal and professional.

“On a personal level, I have two children myself (girls, 7 and 13), and as you get older, your tastes change. I wanted to lend the kind of quality Miramax brings to its other movies to entertainment for the entire family,” said Weinstein, noting, “on another level, the baby boomers are growing up and there’s so much more of an audience you can get that’s been underdeveloped.”

Weinstein acknowledged that since Miramax’s forte is selling and releasing specialized adult movies, his company is working closely with Disney executives to tap their expertise in marketing family films.

“We may have written the book on the hard-to-sell specialized films, but we have the best parent company in the world when it comes to marketing family films so we’d be crazy not to take advantage of that,” said Weinstein.

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Miramax senior vice president of marketing Gerry Rich, who has been collaborating with Disney marketing chief Bob Levin on “Into the West,” agreed: “They are masters at marketing family films to mass audiences and they’ve been incredibly supportive in helping me through the process of creating a campaign that will be effective for children and parents.”

Disney is helping cross-promote the picture through its theme parks, the Disney Channel and Disney Adventures magazine. The studio also helped get 3,000 “Into the West” trailers into theaters and is playing the trailer in front of its own films and on its video releases.

Weinstein said Miramax will spend “several millions of dollars” on its prints and advertising campaign, which will include commercials both on children’s and mass market programs. Extensive screenings, aimed to generate word-of-mouth, are planned for the film, which has played approximately 30 film festivals, including Toronto, Houston and Dallas to “generate buzz from a critical point of view,” said Weinstein.

Rich added that a Disney-conducted test screening of the PG-rated movie produced “numbers that were extremely high as far as audience satisfaction,” and that the adult response “was on par” with that of some of Miramax’s most successful movies including “Cinema Paradiso.”

The two adult stars of the film, husband and wife actors Gabriel Byrne and Ellen Barkin, will participate in multiple-city promotional tours and interviews on late-night and early morning TV talk shows. For a second wave of publicity once the movie opens, Miramax plans to bring over from Ireland the film’s two young stars, Ciaran Fitzgerald, 8, and Ruaidhri Conroy, 12.

Byrne, who brought the project to Miramax nearly two years ago when the filmmakers were seeking additional financing and serves as associate producer, said his experience with the brothers on “Into the West” has been nothing less than “supportive and helpful,” despite the Weinsteins’ reputation for sometimes “clashing with filmmakers” (they’ve been the subject of stories that they allegedly interfere in the creative process).

In fact, Byrne vows that “the movie would not have been made without Bob and Harvey’s help.” He said, “We tried to get the film financed in America and couldn’t. It was a very difficult movie to get people interested in.”

The brothers, who are regarded in Hollywood as renegade, modern cowboys, immediately took to the idea, he said.

“It grabbed their attention and they really saw something in the story of these two brothers who steal a horse and run away to the mythical west,” Byrne recalled.

Weinstein concurred: “I guess they figured they had a good chance with us, that they had a receptive ear, since we were two guys who banned together to fight the system.”