So Why Does Miramax Have All Those Asian Films Collecting Dust In Their Vault?

Fans of Asian film have long been rabidly anti-Miramax. They've organized boycotts, run petitions and generally smeared the Weinsteins at every available opportunity. The reason for that is simple. Ol' Bob and Harv have a long, long history of acquiring titles apparently for the sole purpose of locking them away, and on those rare occassions when something managed to escape the Miramax vault it was generally chopped to bits, poorly dubbed, often largely re-written during the dubbing process, or released with some completely unrelated film maker's name in great big letters on the marquee. Hello, Quentin. But I've always found Miramax's buy and bury policy more than a little bit puzzling ... let's be clear here, we're not talking a film or two here, we're talking literally dozens of titles building up over years with no hope of a release in site. How does this make sense? Buying the film is the expensive part ... even if you get a porr return does it not make sense to at least give the vault titles at least a DVD release to recoup at least part of your expenses?

Apparently not, and Slate's Edward Jay Epstein has got the scoop on why. Hello, phantom economics. Would you believe that Bob and Harv made better bonuses by NOT releasing films than they would have if they did? Here's some bizarre economics for you: they had to spend money to get money, but actually releasing most of these films would've killed their personal bonuses, so they simply didn't. Brutal, brutal stuff and a fascinating read ...

The Great Illusionist, by Edward Jay Epstein

Thanks to Maria for the pointer.