EXCLUSIVE: Miramax has preemptively secured the rights to Peter Hoare's pitch, The Twenty Year, a comedy about two females who, 20 years after raising money to go toward their class' eventual 20-year reunion, reluctantly reunite in order to access that bank account.  Unfortunately, they also need to track down the…

Miramax has secured the film rights to I Won’t Be Home For Christmas, a holiday film written by Lauren Iungerich, who is also set to direct the feature as her first directorial outing. Iungerich is best known as the creator behind MTV’s Awkward series, which ran for five seasons, and co-creator of Netflix’s…

EXCLUSIVE: Industry veteran Michael Lachance has joined Miramax as EVP of its newly created Family & Animation division. He will oversee the creative direction of the unit, reporting to COO and general counsel Bob Osher. Lachance had been SVP Creative Development at Sony Pictures Animation, where he developed such…

EXCLUSIVE: Miramax has acquired screen rights to the Erica Ferencik novel The River At Night. The project will be shaped by Kevin Williamson and Eli Roth, teaming for the first time after each had an illustrious genre past with the original Miramax. Williamson and Ben Fast will produce through their Outerbanks banner…

EXCLUSIVE: In one of the biggest deals to emerge from the 2019 EFM, STX has finalized a deal for U.S. rights to Guy Ritchie’s Miramax pic Bush — formerly known as Toff Guys — for around $7M. Multiple suitors were in the mix for the star-studded crime-comedy, whose cast includes Matthew McConaughey, Hugh Grant, Colin Fa…

UPDATED with reaction. Mark Urman, a prominent figure in the independent film business who headed Paladin Film for the past decade, has died at age 66 after battling cancer. Word of his passing circulated over the weekend, especially among the many film and media professionals who live (as did Urman) in Montclair…

EXCLUSIVE: Belgium-born actress Lyne Renee is joining Guy Ritchie’s Toff Guys and will play Jackie, the wife of Jeremy Strong’s Cannabis Kingpin character. Written by Ritchie, Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson, the Miramax pic explores the collide between old European wealth and the modern marijuana industrial complex…

EXCLUSIVE: Bill Block, CEO of Miramax, announced today that Jeremy Strong has signed onto Guy Ritchie's Toff Guys joining Matthew McConaughey, Hugh Grant, Henry Golding, and Kate Beckinsale.  Ritchie wrote the script with Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson. Toff Guys will explore the collision between old European wealth…

EXCLUSIVE: Hugh Grant is boarding Miramax’s Guy Ritchie-directed gangster feature Toff Guys.  Written by Ritchie with Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson, Toff Guys returns the British filmmaker back to his Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch roots. The pic explores the collision between old-money European wealth…

UPDATED with more insight: The horror franchise reboot craze which Hollywood reaped off during the early part of the millennium looked as good as dead last year. Than this weekend, Universal/Miramax/Blumhouse’s Halloween, the 11th sequel in a 40-year-old franchise, opened to $76.2M, making it the best start ever for…

UPDATED, Sunday AM: Universal is calling Miramax/Blumhouse’s Halloween at $77.5 million after a $27.2M Saturday, making it the second-best opening ever for the month of October behind Sony’s Venom ($80.2M). As we’ve known since Thursday night, Halloween is the best domestic opening ever for John Carpenter’s 40-year…

No trick here: The estimates for Universal/Miramax/Blumhouse’s Halloween reboot-sequel keep climbing, with the high-end of current global projections at $100M. That’s $70M stateside (and some even think that’s low) at 3,928 U.S./Canada locations and another $30M from 21 markets, the biggest scares coming from Mexico…