Let There Be Movies

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If you’re spinning off a movie production company from a giant like Walt Disney Co. and losing your brand name in the process how do you do create buzz about your new venture without starting from scratch?


If you’re Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the answer is: dramatically. A two-page spread in The New York Times and industry trade papers on the last day of their contract with Disney pronounced the end of the brothers’ “extraordinary era” at Miramax and the “dawn of a new adventure” at their new Weinstein Co.


The campaign, which promotes 17 projects in the works, evokes the award season’s “For Your Consideration” ads for which the Weinsteins are famous. It’s all part of a marketing effort to remind moviegoers, power brokers and potential investors that the Weinstein name is synonymous with the kinds of award-winning prestige films that built Miramax’s image.


“It’s the opening shot across the bow, a message that ‘we’re off and running’ and it’s a classic Weinstein move,” said Larry Turman, chairman of the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC’s School of Cinema-Television and producer of the 1967 classic “The Graduate.”


The company’s first national release, “Derailed,” starring Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston, is set for Nov. 11.


Roger Schaffner, chairman and chief executive at Palisades Media Group in Santa Monica, which handled national media buying for Miramax and now Weinstein Co., wouldn’t comment on the company’s marketing plans. These could include at least $125 million in ad buys over the next year. So far, marketing has been limited to the Weinsteins’ placing of the Sept. 30 spread in The New York Times, Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter.


“These guys are constantly tinkering,” said Schaffner. “One of the good things about them being hands-on is that you know exactly what they want you to do.”


The Weinstein Co. stated in a regulatory filing last week that it so far had raised $230.5 million from private investors. The Weinsteins are raising equity in stages through Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which is arranging financing to build a $1 billion war chest that will get the company through its early years.

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