Post-Disney
On December 3, 2010, Disney closed the sale of Miramax for US $663 million to Filmyard Holdings, an investment group and joint venture of Colony Capital, Tutor-Saliba Corporation, and Qatar Investment Authority. The sale included 700 film titles, as well as books, development projects and the "Miramax" name. Mike Lang, the former News Corporation business development executive who was selected as the CEO of Miramax, indicated that the company would focus on their existing library.
After the sale was closed, some movies already developed at Miramax, including The Tempest and Gnomeo & Juliet, were eventually released by Disney under its Touchstone Pictures banner, and theatrical distribution of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark and The Debt has been shifted to FilmDistrict and Focus Features respectively.
On December 16, 2010, Miramax reunited with Bob and Harvey Weinstein, forming a joint venture with the brothers' current studio, The Weinstein Company, to develop sequels to films from the former studio. Sequels to Rounders, Bad Santa, and Shakespeare in Love are among the films being developed under this new deal, while sequels to Bridget Jones’s Diary, Cop Land, From Dusk till Dawn, Swingers, Clerks, Shall We Dance?, and The Amityville Horror are being billed as "potential" projects. Miramax and TWC also said they will partner on new television shows and special edition home entertainment releases.
On February 11, 2011, Miramax entered a home entertainment agreement with Lions Gate Entertainment and StudioCanal to distribute over 550 titles from the Miramax library on DVD and Blu-ray. Lionsgate will handle distribution in the United States, with StudioCanal handling European distribution. Later, on February 17, they struck a deal with Echo Bridge Home Entertainment to domestically distribute the company's additional 251-title catalog on DVD/Blu-ray.
On March 1, 2011, Miramax renewed its Canadian distribution deal with Alliance Films, which had always been a distributor of Miramax releases in Canada from 1987 to 2008 and will replace Maple Pictures (which previously distributed Miramax releases from 2008 to 2011). Alliance will have access to all of the company's library titles once again as well as distribution rights to new Miramax films produced in the next five years.
On March 25, 2011, Miramax entered licensing talks with various digital premium services, including Netflix, Amazon, Google, and Hulu, for digital distribution of the former company's film library.
On August 22, 2011, Miramax formed a partnership with Facebook to create a new app for the latter company's website. Dubbed the "Miramax eXperience," it allows the public to watch clips from the studio's films or rent full movies for 30 "Facebook credits." The films can also be viewed on the iPad or on Google TV. The large-scale Facebook streaming movie venture enables films to be rented in the U.S.; U.K.; Turkey; Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
On September 6, 2011, Miramax announced that hundreds of its film titles were available digitally in Latin American territories including Brazil, Mexico and Argentina under a multi-year agreement with Netflix. On September 28, 2011, Miramax signed a multi-year agreement to bring a broad array of its films to Hulu subscribers in Japan. On November 16, 2011, Miramax announced a multi-year digital licensing agreement to stream a broad range of films to Netflix members in the U.K. and Ireland, and on November 21, 2011, Brazil's NetMovies and Miramax entered into a multi-year movie streaming agreement.
On January 29, 2012, Panasonic announced that the Miramax App will be one of the new apps to join Viera Connect in 2012, enabling users to access Miramax's library of films. On January 31, 2012, Miramax signed a video-on-demand agreement with BT Vision that gives BT Vision Unlimited subscribers instant access to a range of Miramax’s award-winning movies.
On March 16, 2012, Mike Lang stepped down from as Miramax CEO. Miramax CFO Steve Schoch will run the company until a permanent successor can be found.
In March 2012, Miramax and Britain’s branded multichannel broadcaster UKTV announced a licensing agreement under which a number of the studio’s hit films will be made available to UKTV subscribers across its basic pay and DTT channels.
On April 1, 2012, Miramax and Sky Italia, Italy’s leading pay TV platform, announced a deal under which that network will air many of the leading titles from Miramax’s collection across all of its pay television channels in Italy. On April 2, 2012, Miramax and the Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Family Trust announced that Miramax’s Global Sales team will manage global licensing of the library produced by the legendary Samuel Goldwyn across a broad range of television and digital platforms.
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