Miramax bought by Qatari broadcaster BeIN Media Group
Miramax, the studio behind films such as Pulp Fiction, Shakespeare in Love and The English Patient, has been sold to BeIN Media Group, the Qatari broadcaster.
BeIN acquired the entire company from a group of investors, including the Qatar Investment Authority — the country’s sovereign wealth fund — and Tom Barrack’s Colony Capital, for an undisclosed sum.
The purchase will help BeIN broaden its holdings from sports networks and movie channels in 24 countries including the US, France, Hong Kong and Australia. Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, BeIN chairman and chief executive, said Miramax would complement his company’s “plans to grow across the entertainment industry and develop new content production”.
Miramax’s library comprises more than 700 titles, including award winners such as No Country for Old Men and commercial hits such as the Scream franchise. The studio has recently resumed investing in new productions, including the forthcoming Bridget Jones’s Baby and Southside With You, a film based on the first date of Barack and Michelle Obama.
“In concert with BeIN leadership, we look forward to further expanding our film and television output, broadening our distribution capabilities and fortifying our position as the premiere independent studio brand,” said Steve Schoch, Miramax chief executive.
The sale is the latest turn in Miramax’s ownership saga.
The studio, founded in 1979 by Harvey and Bob Weinstein, revolutionised independent cinema with a string of critical and commercial hits in the 1980s and 1990s, prompting Hollywood’s big studios to create their own “independent” divisions in response.
The brothers stayed with the company when it was acquired by Walt Disney in 1993 for $60m but eventually left in 2005 to start The Weinstein Company.
The Weinsteins were bidders when Disney sold Miramax in 2010 but were trumped by a $660m offer from the investor consortium that included Colony and the QIA.
Colony and its partners focused on monetising Miramax’s existing films, including completing a $500m securitisation of the company’s library, striking distribution deals with Netflix and Hulu and, in 2013, cutting a production and distribution deal with The Weinstein Company.
“By riding the secular wave into online streaming, we successfully returned our partners’ capital many times over and safeguarded the passion, dedication and hard work of the library’s true artistic masters,” said Mr Barrack, founder and chief executive of Colony.
“Our sale to BeIN will provide not only stewardship for these irreplaceable films but a best of class strategic owner focused on expansion of production and the betterment of the Miramax brand,” he said.