Word: miramaxers
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Clooney began by pitching the film, originally budgeted at $38 million, to Miramax Films' Harvey Weinstein. "The first thing I said to Harvey was that the budget comes in under $30 million." He also called on some of his Ocean's Eleven acting pals to guest-star in his shell game: Julia Roberts as a femme fatale, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon as losing contestants on The Dating Game. The director also played Barris' mysterious (i.e., imaginary) CIA contact, spitting out some choice Kaufman dialogue and giving the film even more star heft...
Thus Gangs--with so many detours in its making, and abraded by Scorsese's well-publicized struggle with Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Films--may be the epic's last gasp. If so, it is a gasp that sings, howls, like a grand tenor at an Irish wake. Set in the gaudy, pestilential Five Points section of lower Manhattan, Gangs begins with an 1846 street fight: Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis ) and his Nativists against Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson) and his horde of Hibernians. It ends in 1863 with another rumble--Bill now battling Priest's vengeful son Amsterdam (Leonardo...
...decades. Soon after the original production opened on Broadway in 1975, director Bob Fosse began planning a movie version. When Fosse died in 1987, says producer Marty Richards, "I took the script, threw it in a drawer and said, 'That's the end of that.'" Then eight years ago, Miramax's Harvey Weinstein wondered what had happened. "He had seen it as a young person and was passionate about it," says Richards. When a revival of Chicago opened on Broadway in 1996 and became a huge hit, that passion was put into action. Madonna and Goldie Hawn were originally attached...
...story! That's how sure of himself Jackson is. His grand notion was always to film the entire trilogy in one gigantic 15-month shoot, and to make of it three separate but seamless movies, each one minutely, imaginatively faithful to Tolkien. That ambition cost him the backing of Miramax Films and other potential sponsors, loath to give $310 million to a New Zealand director with a few oddball critical successes but no mainstream hits. Jackson's confidence has been validated by the box-office take ($860 million worldwide for Fellowship) and the hatching of a blockbuster franchise...
...Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein began planning a two-part adaptation of Tolkien's trilogy. Soon, however, Weinstein got nervous about the cost. And Jackson got nervous when Weinstein suggested they scrunch the tale down to just one movie. In 1998 Miramax allowed the filmmaker to shop the project to other studios, but on two strict conditions: whoever bought it would have just 72 hours to repay Weinstein the $12 million he had spent on preproduction costs, and Weinstein had to be guaranteed 5% of the gross...