Walt Disney Motion Pictures

Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, Inc.[1] (also known as Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group) is a corporation which develops scripts and oversees theatrical film production for The Walt Disney Company's production companies and imprints. The Group is based at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. It includes:
Walt Disney Pictures and Television (Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures & Hollywood Pictures)
Miramax Films
Walt Disney Animation Studios
Pixar Animation Studios
The Group in its current form was initiated in 1998 by then Studio Chairman Joe Roth in order to centralize the various production units and to make live-action film production within Disney more cost-efficient. The President of the Group is Oren Aviv, who reports to Dick Cook, Chairman of the Walt Disney Studios. Cook, in turn, reports to Robert (Bob) Iger, President/CEO of The Walt Disney Company.
The name Buena Vista comes from the much older company Buena Vista Distribution, a company founded by Walt Disney as a subsidiary to distribute his films in 1955. That name in turn came from the street name South Buena Vista Street in Burbank where the Walt Disney Studios complex was, and still exists today.
In 2003, headlines were made as the first ever PG-13 certificate film was released under the Walt Disney Pictures imprint - Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, a movie based on the famous Disneyland attraction. Although non-Disney branded imprints and divisions of the studio have released films with certificates PG-13 (the first being Adventures in Babysitting in 1987) and as high as R (the first being Down and Out in Beverly Hills in 1986). Disney had from the start of its Touchstone imprint until the release of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy a very strict approach to violence and other possibly mature elements in Disney-branded live-action films.
Film director M. Night Shyamalan, who had done The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs and The Village with Disney clashed with the Group's executives during pre-production of his 2006 film, Lady in the Water. Shyamalan left the studio after Nina Jacobson and others became, in Shyamalan's eyes, overly critical of his script, which would eventually be produced by Warner Bros. Shyamalan is quoted in a book about the difficult period that he "had witnessed the decay of her creative vision right before his own wide-open eyes. She didn't want iconoclastic directors. She wanted directors who made money." In her own defense, Jacobson said, "in order to have a Hollywood relationship more closely approximate a real relationship, you have to have a genuine back and forth of the good and the bad. Different people have different ideas about respect. For us, being honest is the greatest show of respect for a filmmaker." [2]
While Disney owned Miramax since 1993, until 2005 it was run separately from the rest of the Disney companies by Miramax's founders, Bob and Harvey Weinstein. When the Weinstein brothers left Disney in 2005 to form the Weinstein Company, Miramax was subsequently merged with the Group.
In July 2006 Disney announced a shift in strategy of releasing more Disney-branded (ie Walt Disney Pictures) films and fewer Touchstone titles. The move was expected to reduce the Group's work force by approximately 650 positions worldwide, including that of its then President Nina Jacobson. [3]
In April 2007, Disney decided to retire the Buena Vista brand.[4]

Touchstone Pictures

Touchstone Films is one of several alternate film labels of Walt Disney , established in 1984. Its releases typically feature more mature themes than those that are released under the Walt Disney Pictures banner.
Touchstone Films is merely a brand and does not exist as a separate company: the two de facto companies behind it are The Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, Inc. and Walt Disney Pictures and Television.[1]
Background
In late 1979, Walt Disney Productions released The Black Hole, a science-fiction film that was the studio's first production to receive a PG rating (the company, however, had already distributed its first PG-rated film, Take Down—without the Disney name visible—almost a year before the release of The Black Hole.) Over the next few years, Disney experimented with more PG-rated fare, such as the 1981 film Condorman, 1982's Tron and 1983's Never Cry Wolf and Trenchcoat. The latter film attracted major criticism for including adult themes that were considered inappropriate for a Disney film.[2] The controversy over Trenchcoat is generally considered the catalyst that later sparked the creation of Touchstone Pictures. One title considered for the new company was "Hyperion Pictures", named after the location of the studio in the 1930s before the move to Burbank. Eventually, Hyperion would become the name of Disney's publishing arm.
Started by then Disney CEO Ron W. Miller in 1984, Touchstone's first release was Splash, a huge hit for Walt Disney Productions, grossing $68 million at the domestic boxoffice.[3] Splash included brief nudity on the part of star Daryl Hannah and occasional inappropriate language, earning a PG-rating. Yet another Disney film label was started in 1990, Hollywood Pictures, with the release of Arachnophobia.
The Touchstone films became a top source of income for Disney during the 1980s and 1990s. Disney's first R-rated film, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, came in January 1986 and was another smash. Ruthless People followed in April 1986 and was also huge. Both of these pictures starred Bette Midler who had signed a six picture deal with Disney and became a major film star again with these hits as well as Beaches and Outrageous Fortune.
One of the key suppliers of Touchstone films within the last decade has been producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who has had a production deal with Disney since the early 90's,[4] and his Touchstone titles include; The Ref, Con Air, Armageddon, Enemy of the State, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Coyote Ugly, Pearl Harbor, Bad Company, Veronica Guerin, King Arthur and Déjà Vu. In addition, Bruckheimer has also produced several other movies released under the Walt Disney Pictures and Hollywood Pictures labels.
Some other well-known Touchstone Pictures releases includes Dead Poets Society, Pretty Woman, Sister Act and The Insider.
Following the success of the Disney-branded PG-13 rated Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl in 2003 and other films which would in the 1980s and 90's have been assigned the Touchstone (or Hollywood Pictures) names. Disney has decided to weight distribution of films more toward Disney-branded films and away from Touchstone films, though not entirely disbanding them.[5]
Many films from the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group have during the course of their prior release dates been shifting between the Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures imprints before finally settling for one. Examples include; Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Dick Tracy, The Rocketeer, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Santa Clause, Remember the Titans, Sweet Home Alabama, Bringing Down the House, National Treasure, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dark Water, Hidalgo and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

Touchstone Television
Disney's former non-Disney branded television division, Touchstone Television Productions, LLC [formerly known as Touchstone Pictures and Television (itself an alternate version of Walt Disney Pictures and Television) and later Touchstone Television], is known for being the production company of the series The Golden Girls, Blossom, Boy Meets World (all three began before Disney's ABC acquisition), My Wife and Kids, Desperate Housewives, Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice and Scrubs.
On February 8, 2007 at the Disney Investor Conference, Disney-ABC Television Group President Anne Sweeney, announced that they would rebrand Touchstone Television to ABC Television Studio in order tie its successful productions more closely with the ABC brand. The announcement was made as part of a company-wide strategy to focus on three core brands, Disney, ABC and ESPN.[6] In May 2007, the television production company yet again changed its name, this time to ABC Studios.

History

Founded by the brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein in Buffalo, New York in 1979, the company was named by combining the first names of their parents Max and Miriam, and was originally created to distribute independent films deemed commercially unfeasible by the major studios.
The company's first major success came when the Weinsteins teamed up with British producer Martin Lewis and acquired the U.S. rights to two concert films Lewis had produced of benefit shows for human rights organization Amnesty International. The Weinsteins worked with Lewis to distill the two films into one film for the US marketplace. The resulting film The Secret Policeman's Other Ball (US Version) was a successful release for Miramax in the summer of 1982. This release presaged a modus operandi that the company would undertake later in the 1980s of acquiring films from international filmmakers and reworking them to suit US sensibilities.
Among the company's other breakthrough films as distributors in the late 1980s and early 1990s were Scandal, sex, lies, and videotape, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and The Crying Game. The company also made films such as Pulp Fiction, Heavenly Creatures and Shakespeare in Love.
In addition to those successes, Miramax acquired and/or produced many films that did extraordinarily well financially. The company became one of the leaders of the independent film revolution of the 1990s. Miramax produced or distributed seven films with box office grosses totalling more than $100 million; its most successful title, Chicago, earned more than $300 million worldwide.[1]
The company was also exceptionally successful in securing Academy Award nominations for its releases and a large number of the nominations resulted in Oscar wins.
In 1993 Miramax was purchased for $70 million by The Walt Disney Company. Harvey and Bob Weinstein continued to operate Miramax until they left the company on September 30, 2005. During their tenure, the Weinstein brothers ran Miramax independently of other Disney companies. Disney, however, had the final say on what Miramax could release (see Fahrenheit 9/11 and Dogma, for examples). Disney's Buena Vista Home Entertainment division releases Miramax output.
After extensive negotiations and much media and industry speculation, on March 30, 2005, Disney and the Weinsteins announced that they would not renew their contractual relationship when their existing agreements expired at the end of September 2005. Disney's film studio consortium, Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group assumed control of Miramax, which was projected to have a smaller annual production budget. The Weinsteins started a new film production company called simply The Weinstein Company, and took the Dimension Films label with them. The Miramax name remained with the film studio owned by Disney. Miramax is currently run by Daniel Battsek.

Miramax Family

Miramax Family Films logo
Miramax Family (also known as Miramax Family Films) is the family division of Miramax Films created in 1992. Some films distributed by them are:
My Scene Goes Hollywood: The Movie (2005)
Chestnut: Hero of Central Park (2004)
In Search of Santa (2004)
The Adventures of Tom Thumb and Thumbelina (2002)
How the Toys Saved Christmas (1997)
The NeverEnding Story III: Escape from Fantasia (1996)
Gordy (1995)
The Thief and the Cobbler (1995)
Into the West (1993)
Tom and Jerry: The Movie (1993)
Freddie as F.R.O.7 (1992)

Criticism

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Miramax has come under criticism for its editing, dubbing, and replacing the soundtracks of various foreign films it releases. One notable example is Iron Monkey, which though released subtitled, had its subtitles altered to remove the political context of the story, had scenes trimmed and changed for violence and pacing, and had the soundtrack changed, removing the famous Wong Fei Hung theme. Other films that they have altered in this way include Shaolin Soccer, Farewell My Concubine (theatrical release) and Jet Li's Fist of Legend, which was released both edited and dubbed, with no option to watch the DVD subtitled.
Peter Biskind's book Down and Dirty Pictures details many of Weinstein's dishonest dealings with filmmakers.
Under the Weinsteins, Miramax had a history of buying the rights to Asian films, only to sit on them without releasing them for some years. One example of this is Hero, a 2002 Chinese martial arts film. It languished in Miramax's vaults for two years before it was salvaged with the intervention of Quentin Tarantino. And sometimes Miramax purchased films only to never release them. An example of this is Tears of the Black Tiger, a Thai film. After changing the ending of the film, Tears of the Black Tiger sat in Miramax's vaults for five years until its rights were purchased by Magnolia Pictures in 2006.
One reason for the delays and non-releases of films was an accounting scheme the Weinsteins used to shift potential money-losing films to future fiscal years and ensure they would receive annual bonuses from Disney.[2] while trying to bar retailers from selling authentic imported DVDs of the films.[3]
Many North American fans, wanting to see the films held up by Miramax, would seek out DVD versions of the films on the Internet from overseas dealers. MonkeyPeaches, a website about Chinese movies, accuses both its ISP and Miramax of "backstabbing" their site by threatening, without giving the site any warning, a lawsuit unless it immediately stopped selling Hero, which was still in US theaters. The ISP responded by shutting down the site.[4]
As a result of the Weinsteins' actions, a number of Asian producers who sold their distribution rights to the company refuse to do so for their subsequent films.[citation needed]
Defenders of the company point out that prior to Miramax most of the films purchased by the company would have had little to no chance of achieving US distribution other than by very small distributors with minimal marketing expertise and funds. They also state that the purpose of the company's aggressive re-editing technique was always to try help the films find a broader American audience than they might otherwise find.
"I'm not cutting for fun", Harvey Weinstein said in an interview. "I'm cutting for the shit to work. All my life I served one master: the film. I love movies."

Selected list of Miramax films