Miramax Sold to Qatar-Based Bein

Lifestyle FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 2016 Catherine Zeta Jones in her academy award winning role in Chicago. The film was distributed by Miramax. John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson in ‘Pulp Fiction’, one of Miramax’s most successful movies. Miramax sold to Qatar-based beIN iramax, the film studio behind hun- “Shakespeare in Love,” and “No Country for The company was founded in 1979 by titles including “Bad Santa 2,” “Bridget Jones’s dreds of hit movies including “Pulp Old Men.” Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who sold it on to Baby,” “Southside with You,” “The 9th Life of MFiction” and “Chicago,” has been sold the Walt Disney Company for $60 million in Louis Drax” and the TV show “From Dusk Till to the Doha-based beIN Media Group, both 1993. It was bought for more than 10 times Dawn: The Series,” based on the film of the companies announced on Wednesday. beIN, that amount in 2010, by an investor group led same name. Last year, the company’s slate which runs sports networks and movie chan- by real estate magnate Ron Tutor, private included “Mr. Holmes” and the comedy hit nels in 24 countries in the Middle East, North equity firm Colony Capital and the Qatar “The Wedding Ringer.” Africa, Europe and the US, said Miramax Investment Authority, although Tutor later “Miramax is a successful film and television would continue to operate as an independent sold his stake to the Qataris. Colony and Qatar company, providing a strong and recogniza- film and television studio under its new own- had reportedly been looking to offload the ble brand, a unique library and industry ers. “We are extremely excited to have company with its library for at least a year, expertise that complement beIN Media achieved this key milestone within our strate- although no investor came in for the $1 bil- Group’s plans to grow across the entertain- gy,” said Nasser Al-Khelaifi, chairman and CEO lion asking price. The financial terms of the ment industry and develop new content pro- of beIN Media Group. deal announced on Wednesday were not dis- duction,” said Al-Khelaifi.— AFP Miramax’s back catalogue of more than closed. 700 movies have won a total of 68 Oscars, In 2016, Miramax has invested or will be including for “The English Patient,” investing and co-distributing a number of Jack Fisk rediscovers Los Angeles through Malick’s eyes ou might not know the name Jack Fisk, but you definitely know houses of the Hollywood Hills, and even out to the desert, whether it his work. Whether it’s the private bowling alley where Daniel be the serene periphery of Palm Springs or the bacchanalia of Las YPlainview torments Eli Sunday in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Vegas.”It’s difficult making a Los Angeles movie. So many different “There Will Be Blood,” the disarmingly simple Silencio theater in David things have shot here,” Fisk said. He’s responsible for some of them, Lynch’s “Mulholland Dr.,” or a single Victorian home perched on a hill including Lynch’s “Mulholland Dr.”“I was trying to do things com- of wheat in Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven,” Fisk has created some pletely different,” said Fisk. “David (Lynch) loves Los Angeles but his of the most iconic spaces seen on screen in the past 40 years. entry is more ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and it’s a moodier, darker city. Fisk, 69, is a production designer. Who deserves to get the glow of (‘Knight of Cups’) was not. This was more advertising.” Jack Fisk poses for a portrait to promote the film, “Knight of celebrity recognition, like the greats of cinematography did a few Fisk knows the city but he doesn’t live there permanently. He lived Cups,” in Santa Monica, California — AP photos years ago. He has been twice-nominated for an Academy Award, in Los Angeles for 12 years, having moved to the coast in a U-Haul most recently for recreating the world of 1820s fur trappers in “The with his friend David Lynch in 1970. They shared an apartment for a Revenant.” And like cinematographer Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, time near the Sunset Strip, and then they moved to a small home in who he’s worked with on six films, Fisk is one of the most respected in Santa Monica with goats, chickens, and a goose. The goose would the field. Fisk describes his job as being a second set of eyes for the join him for his morning walks to the pier for coffee. director. He’s that rare kind of low-key artist who is a Jack of all The Los Angeles that Bale’s character inhabits isn’t quite that trades.”I got a lot of work because I was a one-man band. I could quaint. It’s full of excess - money and beautiful people and distrac- design it, build it, dress it and prop it,” he said. tions.”It’s not a real world. You’re driving down the street and it’s a His latest, “Knight of Cups” (out today in a limited release) starring Bentley and a Mercedes, a Ferrari. You go to stores and a pair of shoes Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale and Natalie Portman, reunites him with is like $1000. I was down on Rodeo Drive today and it’s crazy, but it’s Malick once more. Fisk has worked on every one of Malick’s films. wonderful. For me, coming here is almost like an amusement park,” They first collaborated on the 1973 masterpiece “Badlands” and they said Fisk, who’s called a Virginia farm home for the past three decades. haven’t let up, despite both taking nearly two-decade breaks. Fisk didn’t win the Academy Award on Sunday. He laughed that “Badlands” is also where Fisk met his wife, actress Sissy Spacek, with he just wanted one to match his wife’s. “The books are falling down!” whom he produced two daughters. he said with a smile. He’s talking to Malick about future projects and The film “Knight of Cups” is an expressionistic Los Angeles still has one more Malick film in post-production, but for now, he’s odyssey, following a screenwriter (Bale) who has lost his words mostly thinking about basements, having just bought a house in through a series of relationships with the likes of Blanchett, Natalie Austin, Texas, in between his daughters’ homes.”Knight of Cups,” he Portman, and Freida Pinto. It takes the audience from the fake streets said was reaffirming to his life and his family.”It just makes me want to of the Warner Bros. lot to the very real skid row area of Downtown and hug them more,” Fisk said. “I appreciate everything that was real in my beyond - to the Santa Monica canyons, the Malibu beaches, the life.”— AP uninviting steps of the powerful Century City talent agency CAA, the This image released by Broad Green Pictures shows Christian grotesquely opulent mansions of Coldwater Canyon, the modernist Bale and Natalie Portman in “Knight of Cups.” .

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