The Weinstein Co., the media enterprise launched this month by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, announced that it has completed a $490 million private placement of equity. TWC has a significant number of well-known strategic, financial and individual investors among its equity holders, including affiliates of GLG Partners, Goldman, Sachs & Co., Perry Capital, Quinta Communications S.A., Softbank Corp., TF1 S.A., WPP, a Mark Cuban investment company, and Vivi Nevo, among others. The Weinstein brothers are the founders of Miramax Films.
Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP advised TWC on the transaction.
TWC has begun to assemble a world-class board of representatives and has named as members Dirk Ziff, chairman of Ziff Brothers Investments; Tarak Ben Ammar, chairman of Quinta Communications S.A; Mathilde Krim, a biomedical scientist and leader in the battle against HIV/AIDS worldwide as well as the founding chairman and chairman of the board of American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), a world renowned charity that the Weinsteins have been very active in since its inception; Andrew Metcalfe, an advisory director of Goldman, Sachs & Co.; and Richard Koenigsberg, CPA and partner at Spielman, Koenigsberg & Parker, LLP; Bob and Harvey Weinstein will serve as co-chairmen of TWCs board of representatives.
Bob and Harvey Weinstein said in a statement, This is an extremely exciting day for us. Twenty-six years ago, we founded Miramax and named it after our parents, Miriam and Max, and we want to continue to pay tribute to our parents by naming our new company after them, The Weinstein Co. We are thrilled with the important relationships we have formed with our investors over the past few months. We couldnt be happier with the members of the Board whom we will be working closely with on an ongoing basis, building and operating The Weinstein Co. We have assembled an incredibly talented and dedicated team of executives and have the utmost confidence in all of them.
TWC will continue to own and operate the successful Dimension Films genre label, which was created by Bob Weinstein during the Weinsteins tenure at Miramax. TWC will handle its own marketing and distribution of theatrical releases in the U.S. TWC will be announcing its distribution in other media and markets in the near future.
TWC is based in New York City and has offices in Los Angeles and London.
TWCs first theatrical release is DERAILED, the psychological thriller from Mikael Hafstrom starring Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen, which will open in theaters nationwide on Nov. 11. TWCs first animated release is
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
