Weinstein Co. will offload its majority stake in ASmallWorld.net to mogul Patrick Liotard-Vogt, scion of the family that started Nestle Corp., sources tell the Times. There's no word on the price.

But there's every reason to think it will be depressed. A Small World was movie honcho Harvey Weinstein's first internet investment, and it soured quickly: Fully a year and a half ago, the VIP members were already complaining about emails pestering them to log on to the site and about the increased ads. Traffic has remained flat for years, while Facebook soared. The problem was fundamental: Rich guys don't want to socialize only with one another, and once you let in enough attractive young women and such your VIP site loses it cachet and everyone might as well just hang out on Facebook, which Metcalfe's law teaches us is exponentially more useful anyway.

Not that Weinstein suddenly realized any of this; he's cutting his losses only now that circumstances have forced him to, and probably at a fire-sale price. At least now he can focus on trying to save his flailing movie company. The members of a Small World have plenty of other ways to entertain themselves.

New York Times writer David Segal goes for the jugular with some of the contextualizing work done here. There're the great anecdotes from filmmakers the Weinsteins have worked with, like Quentin Tarantino's story about the time Harvey wanted to buy a restaurant just so he could blow smoke in the fire marshall's face:

The story killed, and when the laughing died down, Bob smiled, waited a beat and added another punch line. "A million dollars," he sighed, "for a cigarette."

Ah, the flush years. They must seem kind of distant now.

Or Weinstein loyalists like Kevin Smith sounding "wistful" about a failure to promote a film:

"They had impeccable taste when they were hungry," Mr. Smith says. "The problem is that they're not really hungry anymore. They're starving and desperate."

Or guys like the producer of Fanboys going on the record about how terribly trite he thinks the Weinstein's tastes have become:

To Dana Brunetti, who produced "Fanboys," the whole episode was a blown opportunity. "I don't think the Weinsteins understood that they had this stalwart audience of ‘Star Wars' fans in their back pocket," he says. "They just wanted the movie to be whatever had been hot the previous weekend. It was ‘Superbad' one weekend, something else the next."

All things that would've never have been mentioned in public - or private, maybe - by the talent in the Weinsteins employed in their heyday. The Weinsteins' strange fraternal relationship with each other is documented; so are moments of affability, to push home the point that Harvey and Bob aren't the bulldogs they used to be. But key to understanding the Weinsteins, and the way they keep getting by despite hemorrhaging money on failure after failure, is a scene in which Harvey's rattling off the company's slate of current and upcoming releases.

...the brothers were downright generous with me when it came to screening their coming movies. In fact, they shared as much of their slate as was ready - six movies in all, as well as ads, DVDs and rough cuts of unfinished products. The goal, they said, was to demonstrate the strength of these films. For Harvey, it also seemed as if the screenings were supposed to bolster his case if - or, perhaps in his mind, when - he had to complain about this article. We showed him everything and he still said we're doomed, was the subtext. If there is such a thing as prevenge, this is it. "You see this?" Harvey asks, pounding a finger against a sheet of paper. It's a Nielsen NRG tracking poll, a gauge of public interest in coming movies. He points to figures besides "Inglourious Basterds." Here's the G-rated version of what he says next: "This is called ‘smash hit'!"

Or the "next big thing" strategy, which is what they've been riding on for a while, now: sell investors on the idea that whatever comes next will, in fact, be the great success, just based on concept alone: a new Kevin Smith movie, starring the fat Jewish guy from all the Judd Apatow movies: huge! A new Holocaust movie, starring the Academy-loved Kate Winslet: blockbuster! And so on. They even take to admitting that they're nothing more than film producers, which is something they failed to realize when they tried to diversify into a multimedia company.

"What happened was, I got more fascinated by these other businesses and I figured, ‘Making movies, I can do that in my sleep,' " he says in an interview in his office in downtown Manhattan. "I kind of delegated the process of production and acquisitions. Yes, I had a say in it, but was I 100 percent concentrating? Absolutely not. I thought I could build the company and delegate authority, and that's where it went wrong."

But while they now praise the virtues of being scrappy, independent film producers again, it has to bruise the egos of the Weinstein Brothers. So much so, that they'd let a New York Times reporter in their buisness to get the story of their next success strategy out, and in the process, risk having to read damaging anecdotes about themselves like this one, delivered by Kevin Smith:

At the premiere [of Zach And Miri Make A Porno], he introduced Mr. Smith to the actress Sarah Chalke, which was awkward because the woman was actually Traci Lords, a co-star of the movie. "The old Harvey would never would have made those kinds of mistakes," he says. "He just wasn't as present, he wasn't minding the farm, so to speak."

The diverse business approach for a film company becoming a media company was a new trick, weakly executed by an old dog, getting older. The question then becomes something along the lines of: will they keep up? As major studios have learned the hard (and Twittered) way, making and marketing films has become an entirely different game. Can the Brothers Weinstein get with it? Or have the innovations and advances in the realm of their fundamental business - just making movies, and nothing else - already passed them by?

"Weinstein has been shopping around his stake in a small world. He needs liquidity fast, willing to take a heavy discount (as in 50% or more), the sharks should be circling soon."

We checked up their tip with a source close to the Weinsteins and got confirmation that the company did at least entertain the idea of selling its share in A Small World. "They were approached by an interested party and were willing to hear what they had to say," says our source.

As we've mentioned from time to time, the Weinstein Co. is in a tight spot. If Inglourious Basterds and Halloween II don't do gangbusters, it might not have enough cash on hand to promote the rest of its 2009 slate of films. Selling their share of A Small World probably wouldn't generate much — it was never revealed how much they paid for their stake in 2006 — but desperate times call for scrounging for pocket change wherever you can find it.

A Small World—which is supposed to be an exclusive digital playground for the hyper-rich—can't be a growth business in the midst of the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression. The Weinsteins might just be cutting bait, and that might even be a smart move irrespective of their larger financial picture.

Quentin Tarantino is inescapable, from The Atlantic to Jimmy Kimmel, and Weinstein seems to be leaking gossip items to engineer the appearance that he's blithely spending money in St. Tropez. But if Inglourious Basterds doesn't perform at the box office in ten days, Weinstein's days lounging around the French Riviera will be numbered.

He has leveraged his entire company on the fortunes of Tarantino's movie: According to Nikki Finke, the Weinstein Company has pushed back the remainder of its 2009 slate of films—save Halloween II, which opens a week later—in order to put all available resources into marketing Basterds. The Weinsteins could barely come up with the $30 million marketing budget for Basterds, and if they lose money on it, they won't be able to afford to market the rest of their pipeline—including All Good Things, Youth In Revolt, and Hurricane Season. And given the fact that they hired a bankruptcy consultant to help renegotiate their considerable debt earlier this year, it's unlikely they'll find new avenues of financing to fill the gap.

Harvey Weinstein was once the unchallenged master of buzz generation, but he most recently fell flat on his face with The Reader, which like Basterds, had a Nazi thing going on. While The Reader notched an Academy Award—a game the Weinsteins still know how to rig—it pulled in just $34 million domestically and $100 million or so worldwide. That's $70 million more than the Weinsteins spent to make it, but Basterds needs to make several times that in order to pull the company out of its hole. And the Weinsteins won't get all the money—if there is any—since they sold part of the movie to Universal in order to get it made.

So here's hoping that Harvey's hype machine, which for Basterds has included rafts of ads on TNT's Dark Blue, the BET Awards, and sponsorship of ESPN's Espy Awards, can turn the movie into a phenomenon of Pulp Fiction proportions. Somehow, though, we don't think offering Quentin Tarantino to The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg is really going to get it there, but we do like this little anecdote:

Goebbels provides one of the most amusing moments in Inglourious Basterds, crying when Hitler praises his latest film. "If Hitler says that this is the greatest movie you've ever done, I can see Goebbels getting choked up," Tarantino said in explaining the scene. "When Harvey Weinstein does that, I get a tear in my eye."

The Weinsteins are behaving like people on the brink of bankruptcy. They laid off 11% of their staff late last year. They overplayed their hand with Project Runway, stupidly trying to wring more money out of the show by taking it to Lifetime in violation of its contract with NBC, resulting in costly litigation and a multimillion-dollar settlement. They apparently lost the rights to produce a sequel to Sin City for lack of cash. According to Nikki Finke, they can scarcely afford the $30 million or so required to release Quentin Tarantino's Ingourious Basterds in August—they haven't released a film since February, and Finke says they've pushed back the release dates of most of its 2009 slate in order to "hoard cash" for Basterds and Halloween II, which also comes out in August. Tarantino, Finke says, has been gaming out the worst-case scenario: What happens if the Weinstein's can't come up with the cash to release it?

All of which explains why the Weinstein Co. recently hired Miller Buckfire & Co., a consulting firm that specializes in distressed companies and bankruptcies, to restructure debt and help the company raise capital. The move is a tangible and indisputable indication of the money troubles that the Weinsteins previously dismissed as baseless rumor, but they're still gamely trying to spin it is routine: "As a matter of practice we have always worked with financial institutions to explore our options with respect to equity and possible investments and it is something we will continue to do."

In that light, Bob's attempt to sell his Beresford apartment—complete with a "terraced master bedroom" and a "gargantuan coatroom"—looks like desperation. He wants $34 million for it, a 70% premium on what he paid for it five years ago. But that makes sense, since the real estate market has been on a real tear since then. For Bob, it's a significant downsizing: He bought a $15 million brownstone on W. 70th St. last month, so if successful, the deal would liberate nearly $20 million in cash—which could go quite a long way toward helping release Basterds.

But the Observer is skeptical that Bob can get what he wants for it:

And it's more than anything in the building has ever sold for: The mega-investor Bill Ackman spent $26 million, a relative pittance, on his new duplex one floor up; Jerry Seinfeld spent just $4.35 million on Isaac Stern's duplex last decade.

One broker who has seen the apartment complained that it faces south, which means its views of Central Park aren't ideal. "You do see the park when you're that high. But, obviously, the coveted view is east."

The Wall Street Journal and LA Times confirmed a story Nikki Finke had hints of earlier this week: that The Weinstein Company has brought on financial advising firm Miller Buckfire & Co to play with their cash and figure out how to cover the holes in their reportedly massive debt while covering costs to keep the shop open. Notes a Finke source:

"You don't hire Miller Buckfire to raise money. You hire Miller Buckfire because they are one of top restructuring experts in the country. They currently represent several top institutions going through bankruptcy."

And who are some of those institutions? Well, the recently tanked GM, for one. The cash-crunched Readers Digest, too. And Magna Entertainment, a bankrupt company who holds a bunch of horce-racing tracks and investments in the sport. Which, interestingly enough, was founded by an auto-parts guy. Sure, the company's flack issued some ridiculous denial about "always working with financial institutions," but this one's a no-brainer: they're hurting.

Finke notes that she's also since heard that Harvey - probably with the intention of increasing commercial potential - managed to pressure Quentin Tarantino into cutting down his upcoming WWII Nazi-killing epic, Inglorious Basterds, down from its current three-hour run time. Weinstein's always been pretty hands off with Tarantino, so this comes as a slight surprise, but not really, because the film received a pretty mixed reception at Cannes: not what they wanted or needed.

At least they're still hiring assistants. A recent job posting from the once coveted, semi-secretive (now: ubiquitous) UTA job list notes that someone over there - maybe the Harv, by the job description - needs a new minion to harass:

Seeking executive assistant in NYC. Ideal candidate must have excellent communication skills, and superb gate-keeping skills. Must be available on nights, weekends, expect to spend long hours in the office, be able to travel on a moments notice and stay away for uncertain amounts of time. Must have expansive knowledge of film, the industry and minimum 2-3 years experience assisting another top-level executive. Send cover letter, resume, and list of references to: hrjobs@weinsteinco.com

"Stay away for uncertain amounts of time," eh? Sound ominous. The Harv's supposedly curbed his eating and smoking problems, but a new "fuckface" to digest and regurgitate in a period of unmitigated rage is probably an well-portioned expense the company will - thankfully, but maybe fatefully - never write off.

The Weinstein Company To Restructure [Deadline Hollywood Daily]
Weinstein Co. Hires Firm to Explore Restructuring [Wall Street Journal]
Weinstein Co. hires consulting firm to restructure its debt and raise funds [LA Times]

According to the Hollywood Reporter, representatives of Sin City creator Frank Miller are shopping the sequel rights around to various producers in Hollywood. The Weinstein Company produced the original film, which grossed $159 million worldwide. A Weinstein rep insisted to THR that the company still owns the rights to a follow-up, but if that's true why would Miller be offering them to someone else?

THR speculates that the Weinsteins either couldn't afford to pay a contractually obligated re-up fee, or simply doesn't have the resources to get the movie off the ground. Traditionally, contracts for sequel rights include a requirement that the option holder—in this case, the Weinsteins—keep the film in active development. If it sits on a shelf because, say, the company can't pony up the cash to hire an A-list screenwriter, then the rights can revert to the original owner.

Asked for comment, a Weinstein Company rep forwarded Gawker the same statement from lawyer Bert Fields that the company issued to THR:

TWC's rights to produce sequels to Sin City remain intact as they always have been. Any suggestion to the contrary is complete hogwash.

A close reading of that statement would allow for it to be narrowly true even if the Weinsteins have lost exclusivity over the film. They may have the right to produce the sequel contingent upon meeting certain development goals, like hiring a writer within a certain timeframe. If they haven't met those goals yet, the rights could still be said to be "intact."

If true, the loss of the Sin City rights would be just the latest sign that the Weinsteins are barely keeping their heads above water. Earlier this month, they settled a lawsuit by paying an "undisclosed sum" to NBC Universal over their attempt to move Project Runway from Bravo to Lifetime. Who knows what that sum was, but NBC had the Weinsteins over a barrel after having successfully won an injunction to stop Runway from airing, so it was likely more than a token fee.

In December, Fidelity Investments marked down its shares in the Weinstein Co. by 25%; a month before that, the company laid of 24 people, or 11% of its staff. The company has quietly laid off other staff since then.

While the Weinsteins have shown some signs of business life recently, such as buying John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy, they're said to be out of the market for new material such as scripts and book rights. And despite the Weinstein reputation for letting movies sit on the shelf for years, there's even been stories circulating of them offering producers their movies back if they can find someone to pay them whatever TWC has spent so far.

Still, Harvey has his glittery future projects to hold out as argument that turnaround is just up ahead. There's this summer's Inglorious Basterds, whose Cannes premiere was just announced today, and of course, Rob Marshall's musical Nine which Harvey is already positioning for next year's Oscars.

But this is an old trick. The Weinstein Company's CFO crowed in a letter to the New York Times two years ago that the company's 70 percent investment in the home video firm Genius Products was worth $400 million. Last quarter, Genius Products recorded an operating loss of $29 million, and the company that owns the other 30 percent wrote down the value of its share by $35 million, citing an "other than temporary decline" in its worth. In January, the British company Entertainment Rights, which had a contract with Genius Products as a home-video distributor of its films, announced that it wasn't confident that Genius could pay its debts.

We'd really hoped this one would be visiting your neighborhood sooner than later. Alas, Precious, featuring Mariah Carey, Sherri Shepherd, Lenny Kravitz, lauded newcomer Gabourey Sidibe, and Mo'Nique in a career-defining performance as an abusive mother from hell, quietly disappeared this week from its prestigious closing-night slot at New York's New Directors/New Films festival. Sources point to the studio's open-ended legal standoff with Harvey Weinstein as a serious threat to seeing a deglammed, mustachioed Carey back on the big screen any time soon.

It's probably the most significant such drama since 2005, when Fox Searchlight jacked Jason Reitman's Toronto Film Festival hit Thank You For Smoking from the dozing Paramount Vantage. And in any event, it's a 180-degree reversal from Precious's trajectory out of Park City, where news of a big-time deal with Lionsgate, Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey accompanied its Grand Jury Prize. That wasn't the only accompaniment, however; The Weinstein Company soon intervened, claiming that they had a deal to release the film domestically. Breach-of-contract suits and countersuits followed — none of which are yet resolved, we hear, indefinitely postponing Precious's appearance anywhere outside Sundance.

Meanwhile, a Lionsgate representative told us this morning that the film is on track for a fall release. Here's hoping; Harvey shouldn't go hogging all the awards-season fun.

• New Directors/New Films

Tim Gunn talked to New York to reveal exactly how the show will go on without spoiling the eventual, held-hostage season to come:

How is this show going to work?
You'll see the whole construct of it, but needless to say, the designers whose collections are presented will not be presenting their collections THEMSELVES, because then everyone would know who they are.

Oh.
So you'll see collections from extremely talented people, but you won't be able to place the designer with the collection.

So it's just going to be a bunch of clothes?
Yeah. But not unlike any fashion show, except that you know it's Diane Von Furstenberg or Carmen Marc Valvo. In this case, you'll see the number of collections we present, but you won't know whose is whose. [...]

So it seems like no one will be able to go backstage, because then they'd see the designers, correct?
Let me put it this way: We could put all the designers in front of you in a room. You wouldn't know who they are.

Great, just what Project Runway needed: Lost-ian flash forwards that make us comb for clues all season to determine which sassy, skinny gays will put together the collections we've already seen. Add some nosebleeds, a confused Heidi Klum asking, "When are we?" and the smoke monster supplanting Fern Malis as the final judge, and we'll finally have the answer to the eternal question of "What exactly is the island?" (Manhattan, of course.)

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Tim Gunn Just As Confused About Project Runway As We Are [New York]

• Tracking 'Running in Heels'.... BlackBook News... Clive Owen Feted... [WWD]

THR provided an exhaustive analysis today of exactly how and when financier toes were stepped upon and moguls were made to cry like five-year-old girls, which we've broken down into a handy Get Your Hands of My Push Baby Timeline.

· January 16 — Push debuts in Park City. It built steady buzz over the week, wooing suitors, but accepting no official bites.
· January 24 — Sundance's closing day. In a few hours, Push would win both U.S. grand jury and audience prizes. Weinstein execs land in Park City to negotiate for a buy.
· January 25-27 — A series of meetings and conference calls between Push producer-financier Smokewood Entertainment Group, TWC, and Cinetic, a film financing advisory assigned with brokering the deal.
· TWC also explored two other options: one that would pair them with a private investor, another that would see them going halfsies with Lionsgate—a partnership that proved successful in the past with Fahrenheit 9/11.
· Lionsgate was interested, especially since their Chief Drag Officer and one-man money-making -machine Tyler Perry loved Push.
· January 27 — That morning, TWC and Cinetic reach a detailed agreement. A phone call with the Push financiers that day and one e-mail that evening later, TWC had made an official bid, accepting the filmmakers' terms and requesting paperwork from Cinetic. A Cinetic rep replied in an e-mail that he was "explaining every detail" to his client. The paperwork never came.
· January 28 — TWC tell Lionsgate the deal has closed. Lionsgate approached Cinetic and were assured Push was still theirs for the taking.
· February 2 — Lionsgate seals their own deal, with Perry and Oprah Winfrey's involvement secured.
· February 4 — TWC files complaints in New York Supreme Court against Cinetic, Lionsgate and Smokewood.
· Lionsgate fights back, filing a pre-emptive lawsuit asking a judge to declare Lionsgate the film's legal owner.

The crux of the case, then, lies in Cinetic's e-mails and the intention behind them. According to TWC's Scary Hollywood Lawyer Bert Fields, "The critical thing is that (TWC) sent an e-mail saying we've accepted your terms and we've reached an agreement, and when (Cinetic) writes back and says we're explaining the deal to the clients, that's an adoptive admission that a deal exists." A lawyer for Lionsgate retorts, "The material deal terms were not agreed to, and I think it's apparent on the face of their complaint. Some of those e-mails are deliberately authored in ways to suggest that there was a contract where indeed there wasn't."

• How 'Push' came to shove [THR]

Last we heard from Smith, he had just dug out of a pot binge a month or so after Zack and Miri Make a Porno had crashed upon lift-off. The denial, anger and bargaining phases had all seemed to mostly wear off by then, smoothly transitioning into the depression that comes from knowing your mass-market adult comedy — starring one of America's hottest young actors — bombed in every conceivable (and foreseeable) sense.

But! Acceptance is right around the corner with the DVD release. Except when it's not, as in Smith's new interview with the Toronto Sun, during which he relapsed all the way back to last fall's Harvey-bashing tendencies:

Why didn't audiences embrace it?

"I think they would have if they had ever known the movie was out," Smith [said]. "The big problem with Zack and Miri was that their awareness was always really screwed up."

Smith says The Weinstein Company misfired in its marketing campaign in the U.S., especially when it got bogged down in ratings and title controversies. In contrast, the Weinsteins routinely triumph with costume dramas and serious material such as the Oscar-nominated The Reader, Smith says.

"Unfortunately, this was a studio comedy and needed to be sold like that."

We're not so sure, Kevin. Harvey isn't the one crawling out of a "weed cocoon" during awards season. Maybe you should have trusted him when he tried to change Porno to Holocaust Epic. Really, does know his stuff.

• Porno screw-up [Toronto Sun via MyHogtown]

The Weinstein Company and Lionsgate have now filed suit against each other, with each studio arguing that it came out of Sundance with the rights to distribute the movie. It's like Watchmen all over again, but with inner-city drama instead of blue wangs! Say THR:

"TWC reached a firm agreement for the rights to "Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire.' Behind their backs Cinetic Media tried to make a better deal with Lionsgate. Lionsgate was well aware of the TWC contract but went forward anyway," said Bert Fields, who along with David Boies is repping TWC. Typically in breach-of-contract cases, a plaintiff would either want the contract honored or, in its place, monetary compensation.

Fields added: "We have just been informed that Lionsgate went to court today in Los Angeles to preempt TWC's lawsuit in New York. This is obvious forum-shopping by a party that knew TWC was going to sue. We will deal with it appropriately."

Then again, the New York Times is arguing that the film is going to be a near-impossible sell anyway. Well, we'll come back to Push's box office potential in just a bit, after we demolish the rest of the claims in this NYT article for being inaccurate and sorta dim.

First, writer Brooks Barnes amusingly makes hay about the fact that Lionsgate originally agreed to talk to him about the film's marketing and then suddenly had to rescind their offer at the last minute. Barnes speculates that happened because the film is so hard to sell that they didn't want to discuss it—uh, we're going to go ahead and say that they pulled out because of the impending Weinstein/Lionsgate clash that some reporting on the matter might have dug up. Bummer to have that story announced today, too, dude!

Oh, but then there's this:

Lionsgate's recent success lies almost entirely in the horror genre, particularly the torture porn franchise "Saw," although it has had some luck in a corner of movies condescendingly referred to by the industry as "urban." The studio, for instance, distributes Tyler Perry's comedies, which have sold about $248 million in tickets over the past four years.

Really, has Lionsgate had "some luck"? Because from where we're standing, it looks like they actually nurtured a major film franchise and locked it down (but maybe it was because their Sagittarius is rising?). Anyway, there are really too many errors in this NYT piece to correct, from the comparison of its fortunes to the barely released Spike Lee bomb Miracle at St. Anna, to the assertion that "the average marketing cost for this type of film is $25 million" (right, because that's what St. Anna had, isn't it?).

Defamer's seen this movie, so let's give you our own perspective: yes, the film is harrowing, but it's also sometimes explosively funny, and it's adept at building and releasing tension at the right times. Also, with the weight of Tyler Perry, Oprah Winfrey, and The View (Sherri Shepherd has a small role) behind it, this film is poised to hit its key money demographic: not black audiences, but women. There's no way this film won't be enormously talked about in the press, and Mo'Nique is a sure frontrunner for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, which ensures that the film will stay in the public eye long enough to far exceed some industry watchers' expectations.

Also, Mariah Carey has a freaking mustache. Didn't we mention that before?

• Lionsgate, Weinstein Co. tussle over 'Push' [THR]

• Wrenching Film Poses Marketing Challenge [NYT]

The Reader and Milk didn't get very far at all in their first weekends of wide(-ish) release, despite the latter film's particular efforts to separate itself from the Slumdog/Frost/Nixon pack that got a head start a week earlier. Focus pulled in $1.414 million on 882 screens — actually $39,000 less than last November's opening-weekend gross on 36 screens. The $1,603 per-screen average was still enough to knock Frost/Nixon off, but not enough to surpass The Reader, itself a disappointment with barely $2.3 million on 1,000 screens.

And of course all of them succumbed once again to the muscularly rabid breed that is Slumdog — as noted, a $7.6 million-grossing, crap-covered Oscar darling if ever we saw one. Sean Penn and Kate Winslet remain safely in the lead on their own tracks, meanwhile, redeeming at least some of Focus's and the Weinsteins' strategies. Thank God the acting branch remains lousy at math.

• Weekend Box Office, Jan 30 - Feb. 1 [Box Office Mojo]

The Weinstein Company has officially pinned Quentin Tarantino's Nazi-scalping World War II action-drama to August 21 — traditionally the place films like Bangkok Dangerous, College and God knows what else go to die before flourishing in the DVD/Flopz™ afterlife. That changes now, insists trend-buster Harvey, who spent a good portion of mid-2008 courting Basterds suitors to help pursue a Cannes '09 premiere, and who retains only the highest hopes for QT's Brad Pitt-led epic.

Cannes isn't out of the question, though even if Tarantino missed it we figured it had Venice and Toronto to push it into a mild, mid-September prestige slot — more Burn After Reading than Tropic Thunder, the latter which survived an Aug. 15 opening last year with a ubiquitous, $35 million marketing blitz on its behalf. That's way too rich for the Weinsteins' blood, leaving us to wonder if we should circle the date in pencil like we're accustomed to before they move a film back to a more word-of-mouth friendly awards-season spot.

Or if Harvey knows something we don't — that all the spit-take rehearsals in the world won't save what might be looking increasingly like a critical and commercial nonstarter. At least someone learned something from Grindhouse.

• August date for Quentin Tarantino World War II movie [Reuters]

The estimable New York Times didn't like it, nor did the fussy New Yorker. More importantly though, the movie has been shut out of most of the early critics' association awards. There's still hope that tomorrow's Golden Globe nominations announcement will be kind to the Stephen Daldry-directed chamber piece, but right now that seems unlikely.

The Reader was always an awards longshot. But big attention-getting, laudatory awards season circle jerks have long been the butter (if not the bread, too) of the Weinstein business plan. Without such a fervor this all-important year, they could be going pretty hungry in 2009.

It's true! And with the recent flurry of departed execs and now 24 layoffs in the trenches, they'll be staying busy with paperwork for a while: TWC is paying severance based on time with the 3-year-old company, and it's estimated that the cuts will save Harvey an amount "well into the millions." But just to restate, says an insider, the negatives in the climate-controlled Delayed-Movie Vault are doing just fine — as are the Weinsteins, for that matter:

Last year, amid speculation that the studio was running out of money, the Weinstein brothers declared in an exclusive interview with The Post that they would not need to raise equity in 2008. So far, they have stayed true to that declaration. [...]

"If this was a real financial emergency for the studio, I imagine the layoffs would be greater than 24 people," said one source, who added that the layoffs are expected to be a one-time event.

Hooray! Bob is safe, thank God.

• WEINSTEIN CO. TRIMS 11 PERCENT OF WORKFORCE [NYP]

And not just because TWC picked it up for roughly $500 and a tank of gas to San Diego, where the film will shoot next March. That won't hurt, but compared to the rest of the Weinstein slate — most notably the high-end gambles Inglourious Basterds [sic] and Nine— the The Cheech and Chong Concert Movie is the only place the Weinsteins make money these days: Cheaply acquired genre-cult junk. And we mean that as a good thing; the comedians' manager told Variety that the tour has "already grossed in eight figures, and a licensing deal has netted roughly $9 per concertgoer" — rock concert numbers, not 70-year-old burnout numbers.

Roll that over to the DVD/cable/streaming markets where both the audience that pushed them to equally strong numbers in the '70s and '80s and their stoner kids are watching? Back up the Brinks truck! Who needs Fergie's labia, anyway?

• TWC high on Cheech & Chong [Variety]

As director Kevin Smith told the LA Times today, "If [Zack and Miri] dies at the box office, I don't think we'll see another porn-related comedy for a long time." We have a better idea: Make all the porn comedies you want, just don't release them on Halloween behind a campaign featuring sanitized TV spots and stick figures of Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks. While the latter star still remains a relatively unknown box-office quanity, Rogen has done nothing but open one R-rated comedy after another since last year. Zack and Miri, not so much: It's Rogen's worst opening by far, collecting less than a third of Knocked Up's $30.7 million draw in May '07 and contorting his agent into insisting Rogen doesn't need fellow UTA-er Judd Apatow behind him — as with Knocked Up, Superbad and Pineapple Express — to deliver a hit.

Smith, meanwhile, probably won't even beat his opening for Clerks 2, triggering critics to ask how much demand — if any — remains for his digressive brand of raunch. But don't take our word for it: He anticipated it himself, pushing the script for his terrorism drama Red State during the press rounds for Zack and Miri. The Weinsteins didn't want it then and definitely won't take it now; their parting ways with the filmmaker (for now) has less to do with taste than insolvency, particularly with the backlog of films piling up next to the mop in their utility closet. It was fun while it lasted. Except the Jersey Girl part, of course, but they're over it.

Which leaves the Weinsteins themselves, having failed once more in their attempts to stir up ratings and title controversies, looking to Zack and Miri's Flopz™ eternity for a little nickel-and-dime magic for years to come. There's always this week's Soul Men, though, right? Not so fast, says R&B legend Sam Moore, who told The Independent this weekend that he may seek a share of the gate for the Sam Jackson/Bernie Mac comedy he thinks ripped off his life story. And it didn't even do it well:

The film infringes trademark rights over the duo's most famous song, "Soul Man", Moore alleges. It also wrongly portrays them as constantly swearing, making liberal use of the "N-word" and indulging in casual sex with groupies, he complains.

"The film is sexist, racist, and embarrassing, and that's not what Sam & Dave were about," said Moore, who is seeking "significant" compensation, together with a disclaimer distancing him from the narrative. [...]

"The Weinstein Company says the film's fiction. In that case, I'd like them to tell me what part's supposed to be fiction," said Moore. "I'd like them to tell me which two black soul musicians, signed to Stax Records, who worked with Isaac Hayes, it's meant to portray."

Oh — so that's why they wanted to share this one with MGM. Things may be lean around the office these days, but at least Harvey and Bob won't have to face a jury alone.

• 'School' still rules box office [Variety]

• 
  'Soul men' film is no laughing matter... [The Independent]

Recalling our own concerns from earlier this summer, when it looked like Bravo had handed the hit show's marketing campaign to an intern and the night janitor, the Weinsteins filed papers last Friday saying the network went out of its way to torpedo the franchise rather than see it flourish elsewhere. We can vouch for that on one hand — this season's competitor crop was no doubt the messiest of hot tranny messes to befall the series — but Weinstein Co. lawyers plan to unpack the real faux pas in court:

TWC said some of the things Bravo did to sabotage the ratings and value of the show included changing the show's airtime; running a small number of ads; creating "mundane and unappealing" ads; providing little information for the press about the season premiere; and revealing spoilers about future episodes.

The company also alleges that when Bravo began to suspect that the show might move to a rival network, it created "copycat shows" based on the Runway format.

Bravo's parent company, NBC Universal, said in a statement: "Not only do we categorically disagree with the Weinstein's Co.'s assertions, but the fact is that Season 5 was the most-watched and highest-rated Project Runway cycle ever."

Yes and no, notes one observer, who points out that Bravo's bookkeeping creatively combined the season finale's first airing and rerun for a "a whopping 7.158 million total viewers," adding that the episode featuring Leanne Marshall's win was down nearly 300,000 viewers from 2007's Siriano crowning (and twice that many from the '06 finale). Bravo's defense team, meanwhile, bristled at the claim it featured "mundane and unappealing" ads; surely they didn't pack the complex, half-ass quality of the stick figures pushing the Weinsteins' Zack and Miri Make a Porno, but really — what does? Prepare to add another notch in the Weinstein "loss" column.

• Weinsteins strike back at Bravo over 'Runway' [THR]

Another source said: "Basically, Bravo took all the benefits of the 'Project Runway' brand without being a good partner..."
The producers of Project Runway fear Bravo is stalling to get Fashion House on air before the court case is resolved and capture the original show's viewers.

Oh man, NBC is being a bad partner to poor Harvey "I Own New York Media" Weinstein? Just wait until the angry calls and emails start pouring in on that outrage, Jeff Zucker! Just you wait!!