Miramax films

Miramax, LLC

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Film Television
Founded	1979; 38 years ago (1979)
Founder	Bob Weinstein Harvey Weinstein
Headquarters	Santa Monica, California, United States
Key people	Thomas J. Barrack Jr. (Chairman)
Owner	Al Jazeera Media Network
Number of employees	2000+
Parent	beIN Media Group
Divisions	Current: Miramax Television Former: Dimension Films Miramax Family Films Prestige Films Millemeter Films Miramax Home Entertainment Dimension Home Video Miramax Books Miramax Zoe
Subsidiaries	Former: Talk (with Hearst)
Website	miramax.com

Miramax (also known as Miramax Films, stylized as MIRAMAX) is an American entertainment company known for producing and distributing films and television shows. It is headquartered in Santa Monica, California. Miramax was founded in 1979 by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, and was a leading independent film motion picture distribution and production company before it was acquired by the Walt Disney Company on June 30, 1993. Shortly thereafter, Pulp Fiction was released. The Weinsteins operated Miramax with more creative and financial independence than any other division of Disney, until September 30, 2005 when they decided to leave the company and founded The Weinstein Company. Miramax was sold by Disney to Filmyard Holdings, a joint venture of Colony Capital, Tutor-Saliba Corporation, and Qatar Investment Authority, in 2010, ending Disney's 17-year ownership of the studio. In 2016, ownership was transferred to beIN Media Group.

The company was founded by the brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein in Buffalo, New York in 1979, and was named by combining the first names of their parents Max and Miriam. It was created to distribute independent films deemed commercially unfeasible by the major studios.

The company's first major success came when the Weinsteins teamed up with British producer Martin Lewis and acquired the U.S. rights to two concert films Lewis had produced of benefit shows for human rights organization Amnesty International. The Weinsteins worked with Lewis to distill the two films into one film for the US marketplace. The resulting film The Secret Policeman's Other Ball (US Version) was a successful release for Miramax in the summer of 1982. This release presaged a modus operandi that the company would undertake later in the 1980s of acquiring films from international filmmakers and reworking them to suit US sensibilities.