The producers of forthcoming film Playmobil have launched a counterattack on the Weinstein Company, which had once been set to distribute the movie in the US.
On 1 June, Harvey and Bob Weinstein sued producers Moritz Borman and Dimitri Rassam, and Playmobil’s new distributors Open Road Films, over the 12 May sale of distribution rights.
In their complaint, the Weinsteins alleged that the termination of discussions between them and the producers on 13 April “was merely a pretext for breaking off negotiations so that the producer defendants could sell the distribution rights for the Playmobil movie to another buyer”. The deal has been quoted as being worth $35m (£24m).
On 6 June, Borman and Rassam filed a cross-complaint in Los Angeles superior court, saying negotiations with the company had become “futile”, that “[n]o party ever signed anything”. “TWC [the Weinstein Company] launched this controversy, masking its current financial instability by filing a strike suit with no written licence attached,” said Borman and Rassam’s suit. “The producers learned the production lending bank for the project would neither trust nor accept as collateral a promise from TWC to pay a minimum guarantee, due to the bank’s negative perception about TWC’s disintegrating liquidity.”
The Weinstein Company has recently scaled back its theatrical wing. In 2015 it announced it would release around half its usual 18 movies a year and would acquire fewer titles at film festivals. Following disappointing returns for Burnt, starring Bradley Cooper, the Weinstein Company laid off roughly 50 staff members. It was also said to be dismayed by the lack of awards for hopefuls such as Carol, Southpaw and Macbeth.
But the coffers of the company were boosted by healthy returns last year for Paddington and The Hateful Eight (despite screening issues in the UK and US); hopes are high this summer for their long-delayed adaptation of Tulip Fever, the McDonald’s biopic The Founder and the Dev Patel/Nicole Kidman drama Lion.
At this year’s Cannes, the customary lavish showreel party hosted by the company did not occur, but Harvey Weinstein was in town announcing plans to make a small-screen version of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, a flagship production marking TWC’s further inroads into TV.
Open Road plans to release Playmobil on 18 January 2019. The film will be directed by Lino DiSalvo, who worked on Disney’s Frozen, Bolt and Tangled. It marks the big-screen debut for the small, German plastic figurines and one of the highest-profile in a raft of film vehicles for toys that were greenlit in the wake of the enormous success of The Lego Movie.
On 6 June, the co-director of that film cautioned against it being used as a template for guaranteed success.
The wrong lesson to take from the LEGO Movie: “We should make a movie out of any random-ass popular product” 1/
— Chris Miller (@chrizmillr) June 6, 2016
LEGO is a unique brand- a creative tool which 1000s of people were already using as a medium to tell stories in stop-motion. 2/
— Chris Miller (@chrizmillr) June 6, 2016
The Guardian has asked the Weinstein Company to comment.
