Miramax Films

Miramax Films, American film company owned by the Walt Disney Company, with offices in New York and Los Angeles. Founded in 1979, Miramax achieved financial success by distributing and marketing a string of unconventional films that became box-office hits. Disney bought the studio in 1993, although Miramax retained independent control of production, acquisition, marketing, and distribution of its films.

Two brothers, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, founded Miramax, naming the company after their parents, Miriam and Max. The Weinstein brothers focused the company on promoting and distributing foreign and American independent films—that is, films made independently of the major Hollywood studios. By aggressively marketing artistic, offbeat films that larger studios considered too big a financial risk, Miramax attracted audiences disenchanted with conventional Hollywood fare. The company had several hits in the 1980s, including Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line (1988); The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989) by Peter Greenaway; sex, lies and videotape (1989) by Steven Soderbergh; and My Left Foot (1989) by Jim Sheridan. Within ten years of its founding, Miramax had grown into the leading distributor of independent films in the United States.

Miramax prospered even more in the 1990s, with its films often grossing more money at the box office than those produced and distributed by the biggest Hollywood studios. Miramax received wide attention in 1992 for its surprise hit The Crying Game by Neil Jordan. The film opened in only two US cities with virtually no advertising, but favourable reviews and word of mouth helped it reach a larger audience. When the film received an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, it was released in 700 cinemas nationwide in the United States and earned more than US$60 million.

After Disney bought the company in 1993, Miramax produced two of its biggest hits, The Piano (1993) by Jane Campion and Pulp Fiction (1994) by Quentin Tarantino. Pulp Fiction earned almost US$100 million at the box office in the United States alone. In 1994 Miramax created Miramax Records, to release film soundtracks, and Dimension Films, to release thrillers and other films aimed at young, urban audiences.

Each year between 1992 and 1995 Miramax films received Academy Award nominations (but no Oscars) in the Best Picture category: The Crying Game in 1992, The Piano in 1993, Pulp Fiction in 1994, and Il Postino (The Postman), by Michael Radford, in 1995. Then in 1996 the Miramax film The English Patient, by Anthony Minghella, won nearly every major award at the ceremony, including the Oscar for Best Picture. Under the Weinsteins’ stewardship Miramax went on to enjoy further Oscar success in subsequent years, winning Best Picture awards in 1999 and 2003 for Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Chicago (2002).

Despite the studio’s connection to Disney, which built its empire on family entertainment, Miramax continued to release films based on controversial material, particularly in its Dimension Films division, such as the hugely popular 1996 horror film Scream; and in 2004 the Weinstein brothers released the controversial documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore through IFC/Lions Gate Films after Disney refused to distribute the film due to its political content. The following year, Bob and Harvey Weinstein stepped down as co-chief executives of Miramax in order to establish a new independent studio of their own, the Weinstein Company, which also became the home of Dimension Films.