Weinsteins, new Miramax join to produce movie sequels

Bob and Harvey Weinstein are back in business with Miramax Films.

The independent film-mogul brothers, who this year lost out on a bid to buy back from Walt Disney Co. the specialty label they founded, have signed a deal to partner with the new owners of Miramax to produce sequels and spin-offs to 10 movies that they made in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Initially, Weinstein Co. expects to produce new installments of the Oscar-winning romantic comedy “Shakespeare in Love,” the dark comedy “Bad Santa” and the 2005 remake of “The Amityville Horror.” Weinstein Co. also has the right to produce sequels or television series based on “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” “Clerks,” “Rounders,” “From Dusk Till Dawn,” “Copland” and “Shall We Dance.”

Miramax, which is newly owned by private equity company Colony Capital, investor Ron Tutor and the Qatar sovereign wealth fund, will have the right to co-finance the movies and own a 50% stake in the new movies produced by Weinstein Co., a person familiar with the agreement said. If Miramax declines to provide the funding, the company will receive 5% of the movies’ gross revenue.

The deal terms are similar to ones Weinstein Co. made with Disney for sequel rights to 16 movies from the Miramax library including “Scream” and “Spy Kids” as part of their 2005 divorce settlement. Weinstein Co. will release “Scream 4” and “Spy Kids 4” next year.

After a deal for the Weinsteins and supermarket magnate Ron Burkle to acquire Miramax fell apart at the last minute in the summer, it had seemed that the brothers wouldn’t be involved with the studio for a while. But as the Miramax sale closed this fall, the Weinsteins were put in touch with Mike Lang, Miramax’s new chief executive, by Jim Wiatt, former CEO of talent agency William Morris, who knows all three men.

“Harvey and Bob came to us during the sale process,” Lang said. “And our view was that I don’t care about the issues in the past; it’s a great opportunity to do a deal with them on films they are so very well positioned to make.”

Though Miramax, which is moving into offices in Santa Monica, is not producing new movies for its first couple of years, Lang is looking to partner with other studios to make sequels based on titles from its library or to acquire projects that were in development at Disney.

As part of the new agreement, Miramax will have certain digital distribution rights to the sequels produced by Weinstein Co. Lang has extensive experience working on websites such as Hulu and MySpace from his previous job at News Corp. and is expected to aggressively push Miramax’s 700-plus library titles onto new devices and platforms through partnerships with companies such as YouTube and Netflix.

ben.fritz@latimes.com