Weinstein, Tarantino Ride Into Battle at Cannes

At the Weinstein Company penthouse party in Cannes on Tuesday evening, the champagne flowed from magnums, the breeze blew gently over the marble terrace, and Harvey Weinstein sported his leaner, post-Miramax physique beside a fetching Marion Cotillard.
 
All seemed flush in the house of Bob and Harvey, despite the rumors of their imminent demise that lately have risen to a fever pitch.
 
The company, say the rumormongers, has run out of capital. There is no cash to release fall movies like “Youth in Revolt.” Weinstein has been serially seen in the company of billionaires, desperate to raise more funds to replenish the $1.2 billion he has raised -- and apparently spent so far, without a blockbuster hit in sight.
 
Even Weinstein company executives acknowledge the rumors are rampant.
 
That only makes the Cannes debut on Wednesday of Quentin Tarantino’s World War II magnum opus, “Inglourious Basterds,” all the more significant.
 
Fifteen years ago at this same festival, Tarantino made a sensation of “Pulp Fiction,” a movie that went on to gross more than $200 million at the box office and to make Miramax, as Weinstein has so often said, “the house that Quentin built.”
 
It remain to be seen whether “Basterds,” at two hours and forty minutes, with a $70 million budget several times that of “Pulp Fiction” and half-owned by Universal, can perform the same miracle.

The movie played for a mob-like press corps on Wednesday morning, and Tarantino - surrounded by his cast, including Brad Pitt and Mike Myers - seemed to be floating on air. (See Waxword Cannes for more from the press conference.)

But heavenly intervention may well be on the way from elsewhere.
 
At the cocktail party, Weinstein showed a two-minute montage from “Nine,” a star-studded new musical by “Chicago” director Rob Marshall -- with Penelope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Nicole Kidman, Cotillard and Daniel Day Lewis -- that has clearly boosted the company’s confidence. (See accompanying list of upcoming Weinstein Co. releases.)
 
Hudson dances, Cruz sings, Kidman poses dramatically and the always-Oscar-bait Lewis does it all. 
 
If the film is as good as the montage and trailer (it’s not finished), Weinstein may have a path to the blockbuster hit that has so far eluded him and his brother, and a way past the rocky shoals that continually threaten to take the company down.
 
“This is a thumbs-up, thumbs-down year for the company,” said a senior executive from another independent film company. If ‘Basterds’ does well, it won’t be a new lease on life, but it will be proof of concept. By New Year’s, it will be ‘pop the champagne,’ or else -- “the reverse."
 
Another rival film executive was more skeptical: “If ‘Inglourious’ is a misfire, it’ll hurt them ... If it’s a hit, I don’t know if it’ll save them.”
 
Weinstein declined to be interviewed for this article.

 

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