Harvey Weinstein: The Rise and Fall of Miramax, Prison, and Who Owns His Films Now

I was working at the UIP distribution office in the MGM cinema building in downtown Cairo when Shakespeare in Love came to Egypt. Miramax had released it in the United States, but outside America it was handled by Universal, and UIP handled it for us. We premiered it at the Hilton cinema. The head of the censorship board let it screen uncut, including the brief nude scenes that Egyptian censors still normally remove. The audience gave it a standing ovation, and the film did good business. In the same years I had started writing for the Arabic magazine Al Fan Al Sabe' (The Seventh Art), which ran a file on Miramax, Sundance and the new American independent cinema. Back then, the name on the poster that mattered was not always the director's. It was Harvey Weinstein's.

Harvey Weinstein is now 74 and in custody in New York, held at the Bellevue Hospital prison ward in Manhattan. On 23 September 2026 he was sentenced to 15 years for a 2006 sexual assault, after a retrial, and he is still waiting to be resentenced on a separate rape conviction in Los Angeles. He denies all the allegations. The films he built his empire on have outlived his career: the Miramax library is now owned by beIN Media Group and Paramount Skydance, and Scream belongs to Spyglass Media Group.

This article follows both stories: how Harvey and his brother Bob turned a small distributor named after their parents into the most powerful brand in independent film, how it ended in October 2017, and where the libraries of Miramax, Dimension Films and The Weinstein Company went after the fall.

Where Is Harvey Weinstein Now?

Category: Harvey Weinstein, prison, sentence, retrial, Bellevue, Los Angeles resentencing

As of October 2026, Harvey Weinstein is held at the Bellevue Hospital prison ward in Manhattan pending a move to state prison. A New York judge sentenced him to 15 years on 23 September 2026. A California appeals court upheld his Los Angeles rape conviction in June 2026 but ordered a new sentence, and that resentencing is still pending.

The New York Sentence

Weinstein appeared in the Manhattan courtroom in a wheelchair, NBC News reported. Judge Curtis Farber sentenced him to 15 years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release, and ordered him to register as a sex offender. "You took what you wanted by force, and you have never accepted responsibility," Farber told him. The conviction is for a first-degree criminal sexual act against Miriam Haley, a former Project Runway production assistant, at his apartment in 2006. "It is a life sentence for me," Haley told the court.

Weinstein again denied the allegations, while apologising to "anyone I may have hurt by my actions." "I am not a perfect person," he said, "but I am a person who has made mistakes." His lawyers said he would appeal, according to the Associated Press. He had faced up to 25 years.

Six Years of Trials and Retrials

How Harvey and Bob Built Miramax

Category: Miramax history, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, sex lies and videotape, Pulp Fiction, Shakespeare in Love, Disney, independent cinema

Harvey and Bob Weinstein built Miramax with money from promoting rock concerts in Buffalo. They founded it in 1979 and named it after their parents, Miriam and Max. A decade later, sex, lies, and videotape made it the leading brand of the American independent boom. Disney bought the company in 1993, and with Disney's money behind it Miramax won Best Picture for The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love. Harvey became known as much for recutting films and running ruthless Oscar campaigns as for choosing them.

From Buffalo Concerts to Miriam and Max

The brothers grew up in Queens. In Buffalo, through most of the 1970s, they promoted rock concerts with Corky Burger as Harvey & Corky Productions, according to Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures. The profits funded a small distribution company, founded in Buffalo in 1979. Its name combined the first names of their parents, Miriam and Max. In a 2003 essay for Vanity Fair, Bob wrote that his father, a diamond cutter who never lived to see a Miramax production, "was more responsible than anyone else for the creation and success of Miramax Films." One of the company's first successes was the 1982 Amnesty International concert film The Secret Policeman's Other Ball.

The Sundance Boom: sex, lies, and videotape to Pulp Fiction

The breakthrough came in 1989 with Steven Soderbergh's sex, lies, and videotape, a Sundance discovery that went on to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Its success made Miramax the model for the American independent boom. The company followed it with Scandal, Pedro Almodóvar's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Kevin Smith's Clerks and Neil Jordan's The Crying Game, whose secret Miramax built its marketing campaign around. In March 1993 the Los Angeles Times reported that The Crying Game had put Miramax "atop the Hollywood heap." It described the brothers as "legendary for brilliant promotion and hardball—some say ruthless—tactics." Then came Quentin Tarantino. Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or in 1994 and became the defining independent hit of the decade.

Disney and the Oscar Machine

On 30 June 1993 Disney completed its purchase of Miramax, for a price reported at around $60 million plus the company's debts, as UPI reported when the deal was announced in April. The brothers kept running the company. With Disney's money, Miramax moved from buying films to making them. The English Patient won Best Picture at the 1997 Oscars, and Good Will Hunting won Oscars for Robin Williams and for the screenplay by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. On 21 March 1999 Shakespeare in Love won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Gwyneth Paltrow and Best Supporting Actress for Judi Dench, as The Guardian reported. Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, widely tipped to win, took Best Director and four other awards. The upset is still remembered as the moment Harvey's campaigning changed the Oscars, with aggressive screenings, advertising and lobbying of Academy voters, which TheWrap later traced through his campaigns from Shakespeare in Love to Chicago.

I watched this from Cairo. The Arabic magazine Al Fan Al Sabe' (The Seventh Art), which I had started writing for, ran a file on Miramax and the new independent cinema coming out of Sundance. When Shakespeare in Love reached Egypt through UIP, as a Universal release outside America, I was the one handling it. In Cairo it was simply a film the audience loved. In Hollywood it had been a campaign.

Harvey Scissorhands

The other side of the Miramax touch was the cutting room. In 1993 the Los Angeles Times reported that, unlike most art-house distributors, the brothers pressured directors to make changes after test screenings, which had earned Harvey "the sobriquet of Harvey Scissorhands" and led to showdowns with James Ivory and Liam Neeson. Errol Morris agreed to cut seven minutes from The Thin Blue Line. Harvey traced the nickname back to his recut of The Secret Policeman's Other Ball, telling The Hollywood Reporter: "I don't think it's a fair nickname, but you have to learn to live with stuff over the years." Asian films were among the most heavily recut. According to Biskind, Shaolin Soccer, Hero and Princess Mononoke were all reshaped for American audiences. Harvey defended himself in 2004, as The Guardian recalled: "I'm not cutting for fun. I'm cutting for the shit to work."

The 15 years are what is left of a much bigger case. In 2020 a New York jury convicted him of a criminal sexual act against Haley and of the third-degree rape of Jessica Mann, and he was sentenced to 23 years. In April 2024 a New York appeals court overturned that conviction, ruling that the trial judge had wrongly allowed testimony from women whose allegations were not part of the charges, as the Los Angeles Times summarised. At the 2025 retrial, the jury found him guilty on the Haley count and acquitted him on a charge brought by the former model Kaja Sokola. The jury deadlocked on the Mann charge, a third trial on it also ended in a hung jury, and in June 2026 prosecutors declined to try it a fourth time.

The Los Angeles Case

In December 2022 a Los Angeles jury convicted him of rape and two counts of sexual assault against an Italian actor and model, identified in court as Jane Doe 1, in a Beverly Hills hotel in 2013. He received 16 years in February 2023. On 26 June 2026, a three-judge panel of California's 2nd District Court of Appeal upheld the conviction but threw out the sentence, because the judge had treated his later-overturned New York convictions as an aggravating factor, the Los Angeles Times reported. Any California sentence will be served after the New York term. His spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer, said the defence would seek review from the California Supreme Court.

His Health and His Fear

His health has visibly declined. NBC News reported diagnoses of bone marrow cancer, kidney disease and diabetes, and the Associated Press noted that he has been moved between state prison, Rikers Island and Bellevue. In March 2026, from Rikers, he told The Hollywood Reporter what he thought of his prospects: "It scares the s— out of me. Cold and heartless... I don't want to die in here." More than 80 women have accused him of sexual assault or harassment. With a 15-year New York term and a California sentence still to come, he may never leave prison.

Dimension Films: Bob's Horror Factory and Scream

Category: Dimension Films, Bob Weinstein, Scream, Wes Craven, Kevin Williamson, Halloween, Scary Movie, Spy Kids, horror

Dimension Films was Bob Weinstein's genre label inside Miramax. It was created in 1991 for the horror and genre films that didn't suit the Miramax name, and its first release came in 1992. While Harvey chased Oscars, Bob ran sequels to Hellraiser, Children of the Corn and Halloween, and then had his biggest hit with Wes Craven's Scream (1996). Scream grossed about $173 million worldwide and revived the slasher film, and it was followed by Scary Movie and Spy Kids.

Bob's Genre Label

Miramax announced Dimension in December 1991 as part of an expansion plan reported by Daily Variety. According to Wikipedia's history of the label, which draws on Alisa Perren's study of Miramax, Bob founded it to release horror films and other titles that would not suit the Miramax brand. The brothers had already released similar films under a smaller banner, Millimeter Films, from 1988. Dimension's first release was Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth in 1992, followed the same year by Stuart Gordon's Fortress and Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice. The business model was franchises, with sequels made cheaply and many of them sent direct to video.

The Crow, Halloween and From Dusk Till Dawn

The label's first major commercial success was The Crow (1994), the film on which Brandon Lee died in an on-set accident. In 1995 Dimension took over the Halloween series and released Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. It went on to release Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), with Jamie Lee Curtis back as Laurie Strode, and stayed with the franchise through Rob Zombie's films, as our history of the Halloween franchise traces. In 1996 Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's From Dusk Till Dawn began a long partnership with Rodriguez and another sequel line.

Scream: Craven, Williamson and Ghostface

Then, on 20 December 1996, came Scream. Directed by Wes Craven from a script by Kevin Williamson, it introduced Ghostface and a group of teenagers who knew the rules of horror films and still died by them. It grossed about $173 million worldwide and made the slasher, which had faded by the mid-1990s, profitable again. A wave of self-aware teen horror followed, as our survey of Halloween horror through the ages describes. Dimension released Scream 2 (1997) and Scream 3 (2000), Williamson's The Faculty and his directing debut Teaching Mrs. Tingle, and Phantoms, all aimed at the same young audience.

These films reached us in Egypt too. Dimension horror like Scream and the Halloween films came to Egyptian audiences sometimes in cinemas and sometimes only on VHS. Long before most viewers knew the name Weinstein, they knew Ghostface.

Scary Movie and Spy Kids

Dimension then parodied its own success. In July 2000 the Wayans brothers' Scary Movie, largely a send-up of Scream, grossed about $278 million worldwide and started another series. A year later Rodriguez's Spy Kids (2001) gave Dimension its first major family hit and a third franchise. By the time the Weinsteins left Disney in 2005, Bob's genre label had produced some of the biggest franchises in the Miramax stable, and the brothers took the Dimension name with them. Who owns Scream and the rest of the Dimension films today is a more complicated story, told later in this article.

The Disney Divorce and The Weinstein Company (2005–2017)

Category: The Weinstein Company, Disney, Michael Eisner, Fahrenheit 9/11, The King's Speech, The Artist, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, Scream 4

The Weinsteins split from Disney in 2005 after years of fights with Michael Eisner, most bitterly over Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Disney kept the Miramax name and its library, and the brothers kept the Dimension label. Their new company, The Weinstein Company, won Best Picture with The King's Speech and The Artist and made Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. It was also heavily in debt, and in 2010 it had to give up an interest in its film library to stay afloat.

Fighting Eisner

Disney gave Miramax money but kept the final say on what it could release. It blocked Miramax from releasing Kids, Kevin Smith's Dogma and Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, according to Wikipedia's history of Miramax, and the brothers found other ways to get the films released. Harvey also launched Talk magazine with Tina Brown in 1998, a venture Eisner had not wanted. In June 2004, the future Disney chief Robert Iger questioned whether Miramax was as profitable as the brothers claimed. Fahrenheit 9/11 became the main dispute.

The 2005 Divorce

On 30 March 2005 Disney and the Weinsteins announced that they would not renew their contracts when they expired at the end of September. IndieWire's headline summed up the terms: the brothers were "taking Dimension label, leaving all films." The Miramax name and its library stayed with Disney. Bob's Dimension became a label of the brothers' new company, but its existing films, including the first three Scream films, stayed behind. The Weinstein Company was set up that March and began operating on 1 October 2005.

Oscars Again: The King's Speech and The Artist

TWC soon returned the brothers to the Oscars. The Reader (2008) and Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009), a co-production with Universal, were Best Picture nominees. Tom Hooper's The King's Speech won Best Picture in February 2011. A year later, on 26 February 2012, Michel Hazanavicius' silent film The Artist, which TWC had bought for American release, won five Oscars, including Best Picture. These were back-to-back Best Picture wins for a company only six years old. David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook (2012) won Jennifer Lawrence the Oscar for Best Actress, and Django Unchained (2012) became Tarantino's biggest hit up to that point. Not every gamble worked. Grindhouse (2007), Tarantino and Rodriguez's double feature, was a box-office disappointment.

In my years in film marketing in Cairo, I saw this Oscar race from the distributor's side. The year after Shakespeare in Love, the Best Picture winner was American Beauty, a DreamWorks film rather than a Miramax one, and it reached Egypt through UIP, so I handled it too. Two years in a row I was releasing Best Picture winners, one from Harvey's machine and one from Spielberg's young studio.

Debt and the Library Sale

The prestige hid a fragile business. In June 2009 TWC hired a financial adviser to restructure or refinance its debts, as Deadline reported, and layoffs and delayed releases followed. In 2010 an ownership interest in TWC's library of about 200 titles went to Goldman Sachs and Assured Guaranty. Goldman's stake was sold to AMC Networks in 2015, according to Deadline, with the library due to return to TWC once the debt was paid off. The money problems would return in 2017.

Dimension Under TWC

Bob's label kept making genre films under the new company. Under TWC, Dimension released Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007) and the Stephen King adaptations 1408 and The Mist (2007). In 2011 Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson reunited for Scream 4, which earned nearly $100 million worldwide, and in 2013 the brothers released Scary Movie 5. In 2015 Dimension lost the Halloween rights. Two years later the scandal of October 2017 ended the company.

October 2017: The Fall of Harvey Weinstein

Category: Harvey Weinstein scandal, New York Times, The New Yorker, Ronan Farrow, Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey, #MeToo, Weinstein Company bankruptcy

Harvey Weinstein's fall took less than two weeks. On 5 October 2017 The New York Times reported decades of sexual harassment allegations and secret settlements, and on 10 October The New Yorker published accounts that included allegations of sexual assault and rape. His own company fired him on 8 October, and the Academy expelled him on 14 October. A day later, the #MeToo hashtag went viral. Within months came a state lawsuit, The Weinstein Company's bankruptcy and his arrest in New York. He has always denied having non-consensual sex with anyone.

The New York Times: 5 October 2017

Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey's New York Times investigation reported that Weinstein had reached settlements with at least eight women over nearly three decades. Ashley Judd went on the record about an encounter with him in a hotel room in the 1990s. Many of the women had been bound by non-disclosure agreements, which helps explain why the stories had stayed out of print for so long. Weinstein responded with a statement that acknowledged he had "caused a lot of pain" and announced a leave of absence. Three days later, on 8 October, the board of The Weinstein Company fired him, as the Times reported.

The New Yorker: 10 October 2017

Five days after the Times story, Ronan Farrow published "From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein's Accusers Tell Their Stories" in The New Yorker. Thirteen women told him that Weinstein had harassed or assaulted them, and three of them said he had raped them. Farrow had first pursued the story at NBC News, which did not air it, a decision examined in the next section. Weinstein's representative told the magazine that he "unequivocally denied" any allegations of non-consensual sex.

Expelled by the Academy

On 14 October the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' board of governors held an emergency meeting and voted "well in excess of the required two-thirds majority" to expel him, The Hollywood Reporter reported. The Academy said it wanted "to send a message that the era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over." According to the BBC, it was only the second expulsion in the Academy's history. Bafta had already suspended him.

#MeToo: Milano and Burke

The next day, 15 October, the actress Alyssa Milano tweeted: "If you've been sexually harassed or assaulted write 'me too' as a reply to this tweet," CNN reported. Social media filled with accounts within hours. The phrase was not new. The activist Tarana Burke had founded the "me too." movement in 2006 to support survivors of sexual violence, especially young women of colour, as the movement's own history records. Her work now became the name of a global reckoning.

The Pulitzer, the Lawsuit and the Bankruptcy

In April 2018 The New York Times, for reporting led by Kantor and Twohey, and The New Yorker, for Farrow's reporting, shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Two months earlier, on 11 February 2018, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman had sued The Weinstein Company, Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein, alleging repeated violations of civil rights, human rights and business laws. The attorney general's office said the suit was intended to make sure victims would be compensated in any sale of the company. The proposed sale to an investor group led by Maria Contreras-Sweet collapsed, and on 19 March 2018 The Weinstein Company filed for bankruptcy, as Deadline reported.

The Arrest

On 25 May 2018 Weinstein surrendered to police in Manhattan and was charged with rape and other sexual offences involving two women, as The Guardian reported. He was released on $1 million bail. That arrest began the trials, convictions, reversals and retrials that keep him in custody today.

She Said

Kantor and Twohey told the story of their investigation in the 2019 book She Said. In 2022 Universal Pictures released the film adaptation, directed by Maria Schrader, with Zoe Kazan as Kantor and Carey Mulligan as Twohey. It premiered at the New York Film Festival on 13 October 2022 and opened in the United States on 18 November, according to Wikipedia. It grossed only about $14 million worldwide, but it stands as Hollywood's own record of how one of its most powerful men was finally exposed. Universal, the studio that had released Shakespeare in Love outside America, now released the film about his downfall.

Why Did #MeToo Take So Long?

Category: #MeToo, NDAs, Zelda Perkins, Rose McGowan, Peter Jackson, Ronan Farrow, Black Cube, Asia Argento, casting couch

The allegations against Harvey Weinstein stayed hidden for decades because he built a system to keep them hidden. Women were paid in settlements bound by non-disclosure agreements, and those who refused him feared, with good reason, that their careers would be damaged. Stories were stalled or killed in the press, he hired private intelligence firms to target accusers and reporters, and a 2015 police case ended without charges. The industry around him knew the rumours, and for years too few people acted on them.

NDAs and Settlements

The clearest example is Zelda Perkins, who worked as his assistant in Miramax's London office. In October 1998 she and a colleague, who said Weinstein had sexually assaulted her, signed a non-disclosure agreement after reaching a settlement of £250,000, divided equally between them. Perkins was not even allowed to keep a copy. In October 2017 she broke it, in an interview with the Financial Times: "I want to publicly break my non-disclosure agreement. Unless somebody does this there won't be a debate about how egregious these agreements are and the amount of duress that victims are put under." She added: "I discovered that it had nothing to do with right and wrong and everything to do with money and power." Rose McGowan had reached a $100,000 settlement with him in 1997, after an encounter in a hotel room during the Sundance Film Festival, as The New York Times reported. Settlements like these kept accounts out of the courts and out of the press for twenty years.

Power Over Careers

Silence also came from fear. In December 2017, Peter Jackson told New Zealand's Stuff that while Miramax was developing The Lord of the Rings, he had expressed interest in casting Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino. "I recall Miramax telling us they were a nightmare to work with and we should avoid them at all costs. This was probably in 1998," he said. "In hindsight, I realise that this was very likely the Miramax smear campaign in full swing." Both women had said they rejected Weinstein's advances. "There it is, confirmation that Harvey Weinstein derailed my career," Sorvino wrote, as Time reported. Weinstein's spokesperson denied it, saying Miramax lost the project and that New Line did all the casting, according to Variety.

The Press That Didn't Publish

Rumours about Weinstein had circulated in the industry for years, but no one could print them. Jodi Kantor told Newsweek that sources had warned her: "Everybody knows about Weinstein... This is the way Hollywood has always been." Ronan Farrow first pursued the story at NBC News, which did not air it, and he took it to The New Yorker. In his 2019 book Catch and Kill, he accused NBC of obstructing his reporting, which NBC denied. In November 2017, in "Harvey Weinstein's Army of Spies", Farrow revealed that from the autumn of 2016 Weinstein had hired private intelligence firms, including Kroll and Black Cube, an agency run largely by former Mossad officers, to collect information on accusers and journalists. Black Cube operatives used false identities to approach their targets, including Rose McGowan. Farrow also reported that Dylan Howard of American Media Inc., publisher of the National Enquirer, shared material with Weinstein, which Howard disputed.

Why Many Didn't Go to the Police

One woman who did go to the police before 2017 showed how hard it was to win. In March 2015 the Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez told the New York police that Weinstein had groped her at his office. The next day, wearing a police wire, she recorded him apologising: "Oh, please, I'm sorry... I'm used to that." Within two weeks, the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. decided not to charge him, as CBS News reported. She later signed a non-disclosure agreement. Others feared that no one would believe them over one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. The Italian actress Asia Argento told Farrow, in his October 2017 New Yorker article, that Weinstein had sexually assaulted her in 1997 on the French Riviera during the Cannes festival, and she described how afraid she had been of what he could do to her career. In 2018 Argento was herself accused of sexual misconduct by the actor Jimmy Bennett; she denied it, as The New York Times reported.

The Industry Culture

I saw Harvey Weinstein only once, walking at Cannes and talking to someone. I did not greet him or shake his hand. He looked like a tough man. In my travels in Europe and in my years around Egyptian cinema, I saw a casting-couch culture in which some producers kept bedrooms in their offices and some young actresses entered relationships or marriages with powerful men in order to start their careers. I accuse no one by name. What I saw was less a story about women's choices than about a system that gave a few men control over who would work, and in which saying no could cost you everything.

In Egypt we have a saying: when the animal falls, many knives come out. It describes how people turn on someone only once he is down. After October 2017, many who had stayed silent for years spoke at once. But the saying explains the timing, not the motives. Most of those who spoke were people who had been harmed, or who had watched it happen, and who could finally speak without losing everything. Their accounts were later tested in court, with convictions, acquittals and hung juries, as the first section of this article shows. The silence before the fall is the real indictment, of an industry that waited for the animal to fall before anyone dared to speak.

Where Is Bob Weinstein Now?

Category: Bob Weinstein, Dimension Films, Weinstein Company bankruptcy, Amanda Segel, victims' fund, Harvey Weinstein lawsuit

Bob Weinstein, who turns 72 on 18 October 2026, runs no studio and has kept a low profile since The Weinstein Company collapsed. He publicly condemned his brother in October 2017 and denied a harassment allegation made against him that same month. He was named in New York's 2018 lawsuit and lost the company in bankruptcy. The latest verified news about him dates from July 2025, when Harvey dropped his fraud claims against him with no payment and no settlement.

The Quiet Brother

Bob was always the less visible Weinstein. He worked mostly in Los Angeles running Dimension, while Harvey was the face of the company and its Oscar campaigns. Each brother owned about 20 percent of TWC. In October 2017, Bob told The Hollywood Reporter that he had barely spoken to his brother in five years: "I could not take his cheating, his lying and also his attitude toward everyone." He said he had known Harvey was unfaithful but not "the type of predator that he was," and he called his brother's behaviour "sick and depraved": "It's a sickness but not a sickness that is excusable. It's a sickness that's inexcusable." He said the Academy should expel him. "Harvey was a bully, Harvey was arrogant," he added. "That I knew." Earlier that week, in a statement quoted by Entertainment Weekly, he had called Harvey "a world-class liar".

The Allegation Against Bob

On 17 October 2017, Amanda Segel, an executive producer of TWC's Spike TV series The Mist, told Variety that Bob had repeatedly made unwanted romantic overtures to her from June 2016, for about three months, until her lawyer warned company executives that she would leave the show. "'No' should be enough," she said. Bob denied any inappropriate behaviour. His lawyer, Bert Fields, said that even taken at face value her account contained "not a hint of any inappropriate touching" and "there is no way it would amount to" sexual harassment.

The Lawsuit, the Bankruptcy and the Victims' Fund

In February 2018, New York's attorney general named Bob, along with Harvey and the company, in a civil rights lawsuit, alleging that TWC's leadership had failed to protect employees. TWC filed for bankruptcy in March 2018, and in July its assets were sold to Lantern Capital for $289 million. After earlier proposed settlements fell apart, a Delaware bankruptcy judge, Mary Walrath, approved TWC's liquidation plan on 25 January 2021, as Reuters reported. Insurers contributed about $35.2 million, of which about $17.1 million was set aside for women with sexual misconduct claims against Harvey. In exchange, the plan released former officers and directors from further claims, which four accusers had objected to, according to the federal court's later opinion. The judge noted that 83 percent of the claimants supported the plan. Bob himself lost money: he had loaned the company $11.1 million and was not repaid.

Harvey Against Bob

The brothers' feud reached court in February 2025. Harvey, then in custody, filed a counterclaim blaming Bob, the former TWC president David Glasser and the company's accountant for its collapse, accusing Bob of "financial betrayal" over a loan Harvey had personally guaranteed. In July 2025 Harvey dropped the claims against Bob with prejudice, as Variety reported. "Bob entered no settlement with Harvey and paid him no consideration in exchange for the dismissal," Bob's lawyer, Brian Kohn, said.

Bob Today

As of October 2026, there is no public report of a new Bob Weinstein company or production. His last producing credits date from the final Dimension releases of 2018 and 2019, such as Polaroid. The label he founded is defunct, and the films he made are owned by others, as the next sections explain. He has largely stayed out of the public eye since the 2017 collapse.

Who Owns Miramax Now?

Category: Miramax ownership, Disney, Filmyard, beIN Media Group, Paramount, Skydance, Warner Bros. Discovery, Jonathan Glickman

Miramax is owned 51 percent by Qatar's beIN Media Group and 49 percent by Skydance Corporation, the company formerly known as Paramount Skydance, which bought its stake as ViacomCBS in 2020. Paramount Pictures distributes the library of more than 700 films, from Pulp Fiction to Shakespeare in Love. After Skydance's takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery closed on 6 October 2026, that 49 percent stake became a penalty: the combined company must sell it if it fails to release enough films each year. Jonathan Glickman has run Miramax since April 2024.

From Disney to Filmyard to beIN

After the Weinsteins left in 2005, Disney kept Miramax for five more years, cutting its staff and releases before selling it. In December 2010 Disney closed the sale to Filmyard Holdings, a joint venture of Colony Capital, Tutor-Saliba and the Qatar Investment Authority, for about $663 million. The deal included about 700 titles and the Miramax name, as The Guardian reported when it was agreed. In March 2016 Filmyard sold Miramax to the Doha-based beIN Media Group, the sports and entertainment network chaired by Nasser Al-Khelaïfi.

Paramount Buys 49 Percent

On 3 April 2020, ViacomCBS completed its purchase of 49 percent of Miramax from beIN, for a total committed investment of $375 million, according to the company's announcement. About $150 million was paid at closing, and $45 million a year for five years was committed to new productions. Paramount Pictures gained an exclusive, long-term deal to distribute the Miramax library and a first-look deal to develop new film and television projects from its titles. beIN kept 51 percent. At the time of the deal, ViacomCBS said the library included 278 Oscar nominations, 68 Oscars and four Best Picture winners: The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, Chicago and No Country for Old Men.

Skydance, Warner Bros. and the Miramax Condition

On 7 August 2025, David Ellison's Skydance Media completed its merger with Paramount Global, creating Paramount Skydance, as Paramount announced. The Miramax stake came with it. On 6 October 2026 the company completed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery and renamed itself Skydance Corporation. Variety valued the deal at $111 billion including WBD's debt, and the AP put it at $81 billion. To settle an antitrust suit by 12 states, the company promised to release at least 30 films a year, according to Fortune. The consent decree says that if the company misses the target and fails to make up the shortfall within a six-month cure period, it "shall divest its entire direct and indirect ownership interest in Miramax Studios." The studio that once defined independent film is now, in part, the guarantee behind a promise to keep Hollywood making movies.

What Is in the Library

The library covers Miramax's releases until the Weinsteins left in 2005. Because Dimension's existing films stayed behind when the brothers took the label, it also includes most pre-2005 Dimension titles, among them Scream, Scream 2 and Scream 3 and the first three Scary Movie films. According to Wikipedia's history of Dimension, Paramount's 2020 distribution deal covers them too, with some exceptions. Shakespeare in Love is in the library as well, though Universal handled its original release outside the United States, which is how it reached Egypt through UIP.

Who Runs Miramax Today

On 2 April 2024 Miramax named Jonathan Glickman, the founder of Panoramic Media, as its chief executive, as Variety reported. He replaced Bill Block, who had left in October 2023. Under Glickman, Miramax has focused on reviving its own library. Miramax's website lists the new Scary Movie, released with Paramount, which reunited the Wayans brothers, and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. Upcoming are The Beekeeper 2 with Jason Statham, with Amazon MGM Studios, and Supermax, starring Will Smith. On television, Miramax and Paramount have taken Cop Land and Ella Enchanted to series, the latter at Disney+, as Deadline reported. Neither Harvey nor Bob has any role in the company that still carries their parents' names.

Who Owns Scream and the Weinstein Company Library?

Category: Scream rights, Weinstein Company library, Lantern, Spyglass Media Group, Lionsgate, Paramount, Scream 7, Ghostface

The Weinstein Company's library went to Lantern Capital for $289 million in 2018, then to Spyglass Media Group, which sold about 200 of its films, including Django Unchained, Inglourious Basterds and The King's Speech, to Lionsgate in 2021. Spyglass kept the Scream franchise, and Paramount releases the new Scream films. The first three Scream films are in the Miramax library, also distributed by Paramount, while Scream 4 went to Lionsgate. Bob's horror hit is now divided among three companies.

Lantern: The Bankruptcy Buyer

On 16 July 2018, the Dallas private equity firm Lantern Capital completed its $289 million purchase of The Weinstein Company's assets out of bankruptcy, as The Hollywood Reporter reported. It formed Lantern Entertainment to hold a library of 277 films, including the post-2005 Dimension titles.

Spyglass: A New Home for the Weinstein Films

In March 2019, Lantern and Gary Barber, the former MGM chief who had co-founded Spyglass Entertainment with Roger Birnbaum in 1998, relaunched it as Spyglass Media Group, "a new home for former Weinstein Co. assets," as Deadline reported. Barber became chief executive, and Lantern remained the majority owner, with Warner Bros., Eagle Pictures and Cineworld as minority investors. In July 2019, Spyglass and Viacom settled a dispute over Scream rights in the bankruptcy court, with Viacom paying $11 million, according to Deadline.

Lionsgate Buys the Bulk

On 15 July 2021, Lionsgate bought "the vast majority" of Spyglass's feature film library, about 200 titles, and took an equity stake in the company, according to Lionsgate's announcement. Its filings put the total, films and stake together, at $191.4 million. The titles included three Tarantino films, Django Unchained, Inglourious Basterds and The Hateful Eight, along with The King's Speech, Silver Linings Playbook, Fruitvale Station, Lee Daniels' The Butler, Paddington, Scream 4, Scary Movie 5 and Spy Kids 4. Spyglass kept its most valuable assets, the franchises, including Scream and Hellraiser, together with the Project Runway series.

Scream: Split Rights

The result is one of the oddest rights maps in Hollywood. Scream (1996), Scream 2 and Scream 3 were released before 2005, so they stayed in the Miramax library, which Paramount distributes. Scream 4 (2011), made under TWC, now belongs to Lionsgate. The franchise itself, the right to make new films, belongs to Spyglass, which revived it with Paramount as its distributor, as Variety reported in June 2020. Spyglass and Paramount released Scream (2022) and Scream VI (2023). So Paramount distributes both the original trilogy and the new films, while the fourth film sits with another studio.

Scream 7: Record Box Office

Scream 7 almost did not happen in its planned form. In November 2023, Spyglass fired Melissa Barrera, one of the leads of the revived series, over social media posts about the Gaza war, and her co-star Jenna Ortega also left. The studio rebuilt the film around the return of Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott, who had sat out Scream VI in a pay dispute. Released by Paramount on 27 February 2026, it became the highest-grossing film in the series, with $213.8 million worldwide according to Variety. Thirty years after Dimension launched it, Ghostface has never earned more.

The Ghostface Mask Lawsuit

Even the mask was disputed. In February 2026, ahead of the release of Scream 7, Paramount and Spyglass sued Alterian Ghost Factory, which had claimed ownership of the Ghostface mask and threatened litigation, as The Hollywood Reporter reported. In May 2026 the two sides settled and dismissed their lawsuits, Reuters reported.

Where the Libraries Went

The brothers' films are now spread across the industry. The Miramax library belongs to beIN and Skydance and is distributed by Paramount. Most of the TWC library and the post-2005 Dimension films belong to Lionsgate. Scream belongs to Spyglass, which according to the most recent public reports remains majority-owned by Lantern, with Lionsgate, Warner Bros., Eagle Pictures and Cineworld as minority investors. How Skydance's takeover of Warner Bros. affects Warner's small stake has not been reported. Neither Harvey nor Bob owns any of the films they made famous.

Conclusion: From Miramax to Bellevue

Category: Harvey Weinstein legacy, Miramax, #MeToo, film history

Harvey Weinstein built one of the most influential independent film companies in history and then lost everything: his company, his reputation, his freedom and the films themselves. Miramax belongs to beIN and Skydance, most of the Weinstein Company library belongs to Lionsgate, and Scream belongs to Spyglass. Harvey is serving his sentence, and Bob has left the business.

I remember the Miramax years from the inside of the business, from the UIP office in the MGM cinema in downtown Cairo, where I wrote for Al Fan Al Sabe' and watched the Miramax and Sundance films reshape what an "art film" could earn. I still remember the standing ovation for Shakespeare in Love at the Hilton premiere, screened uncut. Years later I saw Harvey walking at Cannes and didn't greet him; he looked like a tough man. Today the same name that sold those films is attached to a prison sentence, and as we say in Egypt, when the animal falls, many knives come.

The films outlived the men who sold them. Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, Scream and The King's Speech are still watched, bought and sold, but the Weinstein name no longer appears on any of the companies that own them. The real legacy of the story is #MeToo: the women who spoke in October 2017 changed how the industry treats power, and that change matters more than any library.

Harvey Weinstein FAQ

Where is Harvey Weinstein now?

Harvey Weinstein remains in custody in New York and has been held at Bellevue Hospital's prison ward. On 23 September 2026 he was sentenced in New York to 15 years, and his Los Angeles resentencing is still pending.

Is Harvey Weinstein still in prison?

Yes. He is serving his New York sentence and still faces his separate Los Angeles conviction.

Who founded Miramax?

The brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein founded Miramax in 1979 and named it after their parents, Miriam and Max.

Who owns Miramax now?

beIN Media Group owns 51% of Miramax and Skydance owns 49%, with Paramount distributing the library. Jonathan Glickman has been CEO since April 2024.

Where is Bob Weinstein now?

Bob Weinstein has stepped away from the film business since the collapse of The Weinstein Company and no longer owns any of the films he produced.

Who owns the Scream movies?

Scream 1 to 3 are in the Miramax library, distributed by Paramount. Scream 4 belongs to Lionsgate. The franchise and the new films belong to Spyglass Media Group, with Paramount as distributor.

What happened to The Weinstein Company library?

Lantern Capital bought it out of bankruptcy for $289 million in 2018 and moved it into Spyglass Media Group, which sold about 200 titles to Lionsgate in 2021.

Why did #MeToo take so long to reach Harvey Weinstein?

Non-disclosure agreements, his power over careers, stories that were killed before publication, the private investigators of Black Cube and the Manhattan DA's 2015 decision not to prosecute all kept the allegations quiet until The New York Times and The New Yorker published them in October 2017.