WHY THEY DID IT

One of the bugbears of Asian film fandom in the US over the past ten years is why Miramax bought so many titles only to never release them. The answer's out, and it ain't pretty. Everyone's linked to this story, but I had to comment on it.

According to this article by Edward Jay Epstein in Slate, after Miramax was sold to Disney, Harvey and Bob's personal bonuses were tied to Miramax's annual performance. If a movie was bought, it wasn't counted as an expenditure until it was released, so the $20 million they reportedly spent on HERO didn't actually show up on the books until 2004, when the movie was released, two years after they actually bought it.

It's high level creative book keeping that means movies like TEARS OF THE BLACK TIGER probably never showed up on the ledger sheet at all, because they never released it.

Now that Disney's stuck with a much-less-profitable-than-anticipated Miramax that no one cares about, one wonders if they'll start dumping movies from the archives onto the market in an attempt to make a buck off the dead duck they bought.