Less striking while the iron is hot, more striking while the iron has long since cooled and been flung in the corner to gather dust, The Weinstein Company and a company called Colony Capital, which owns the rights brothers’ old Miramax titles have announced they are raiding the archives to craft sequels to the likes of Shakespeare In Love and Rounders.
"I personally have never made a sequel, but I will make S****hakespeare In Love as one. I’ve always wanted to do that and now we have the impetus to. There is so much intellectual property, and we’re in an age where, for however long it lasts, content is king. Working with Qatar and Colony will for us be a great learning experience,” Harvey Weinstein told Deadline as the announcement was made. No information was announced about who might return for the sequel to John Madden’s Oscar-winning 1998 romantic comedy drama, but you can bet phone calls are being made now to Joseph Fiennes’ agents. Will it tell another (fictional) chapter of the Bard’s life? Will we get to see the genesis of, say, The Tempest?
As for Rounders, that’s one that has been bubbling away for years, popping up in the rumour soup every once in a while. Writers David Levien and Brian Koppelman have been talking it up every chance they get. "I’ve discussed making** Rounders 2** with Matt Damon and I would say that’s going to be instantaneous,” Weinstein says. “David Levien and Brian Koppelman [had a] great idea, a way to make it more international where you start the card game in Paris, that’s all I want to say. There might be a certain beautiful Parisian actress involved in it, and then we’re off to the racetrack and Vegas with Matty and Edward Norton, and a new supervillain to replace John Malkovich.” Robert De Niro is apparently in the frame for that role.
And that’s just the tippy top of the back catalogue-raiding iceberg. Plans are also afoot to turn films such as **Flirting With Disaster **and – no, really – Good Will Hunting into TV series. So if any Miramax property can now nab a sequel or mutate into a TV show, which would you pick to see more of?