FREE MEN: THE WEINSTEINS TALK NEW STRATEGY (WSJ)

By Nancy Vialatte

After parting ways with Disney just over a year ago, Harvey and Bob Weinstein sat down with the Wall Street Journal to talk about their plans for making The Weinstein Company a "multifaceted media company."

Below are excerpts from the interview.

On what's different:

Bob Weinstein: For 25 years, we were a boutique film company; now we consider ourselves a boutique media company. That encompasses film as our No. 1 interest. But we also have the ability to branch out into other areas. Something I'm proudest of is the Genius deal (Ed. note: TWC has a stake in the video distributor). Our 70% is now worth around $300 million. ... I don't think any movie we've been associated with has made that kind of money.

On his new role:

Harvey Weinstein: The first six months in the new company, I was really concentrating on building an infrastructure. We have a vision internationally of partnering with the world's biggest individual broadcasters. And I got fascinated with animation and built an infrastructure for that. I didn't know that right out the box we'd have such a monster hit in "Hoodwinked." And now we're in production with "Hoodwinked II." Bob always kids me around. All the franchises and sequels were his. I never had one sequel in 25 years.

On reconquering the independent market and freedom from Disney:

Harvey Weinstein: I don't think we want to. I think that we'll always have successful movies. I think we'll always have a big stance in the independent film market. But this is like the Starship Enterprise: We're going into places where no one else has gone before.

When we were at Disney, we were allowed to make movies, and anything outside the box, we had to ask permission. We wanted to buy Artisan, we wanted to buy Bravo, we wanted to buy IFC. We negotiated deals on all these things, and we got turned down. Had those deals been agreed to, Miramax would be a $5 billion company. Today, the great thing is we're free to do these deals.

On things with Disney now:

Bob Weinstein: We have a very good relationship with Bob Iger ... He's set a fantastic tone. There's no animosity. It's actually been good. We've wondered if we'd still be there.

On potentially spreading themselves too thin:

Harvey Weinstein: So what would you tell Rupert Murdoch: Please just stick to broadcasting and newspapers? Don't buy a company like MySpace? When people read Genius's profit statement next year, and the size of the company that we're building, I think they'll weep. The first thing Kirk Kerkorian said when we started the new company was "build a library." Well, in a year, I never thought we'd be able to control 1,000 films. And that's basically what we have now. They're not the caliber of the old Miramax library, but there is something to be said for quantitative. And it's getting better every day.

Weinstein 2: They're Back (WSJ, sub)