Harvey Weinstein On Brexit: “A Huge Mistake”; People “Voted Out Of Fear”

Harvey Weinstein was in Cannes today for the Cannes Lions Creativity Festival. The exec who has business dealings in the UK told me that he was “shocked” over Britain’s vote to leave the EU and predicted “discrimination” against some productions going forward. His War And Peace miniseries, made with the BBC, qualified as European and thus was able to meet Europe’s quota requirements. “It could be very costly in the movie and TV industry in terms of content branding,” he said.

Further, Weinstein added, “This is not about economics, this is about immigration. They don’t want Muslims in the country. These guys who voted, voted out of fear. It’s a huge mistake.”

Here’s Weinstein’s full comment to Deadline:

“I’m shocked and the thing that surprised me the most is a great Prime Minister like David Cameron resigning. From his point of view — history is important to these guys in a big way — he didn’t want to preside over a disaster and wanted to save his reputation as a great Prime Minister. He’ll be proven right. This is not about economics, this is about immigration. They don’t want Muslims in the country. These guys who voted, voted out of fear. It’s a huge mistake.

“I think there will be discrimination now against some of the product and what it means to be European product. A lot of TV stations in Europe are under quotas. When you do War And Peace, that was accepted as European. It could be very costly in the movie and TV industry in terms of content branding. European branding is very important. It’s a big deal for these young British filmmakers.

“I’m hoping in 60 days the country wakes up and says ‘Can we have a do-over?’ You know, watching the stock market and Cameron coming back and saying, ‘These are the things that are happening; it will get worse. Let’s do it again.’”