We’re lazy — there’s no shame in that. And we’re still working our way through last week’s mail. There is some shame there: we get far too much of the stuff. Putting the two elements together allows us the luxury of reading Sara Nelson’s column, rubbing our chin as we contemplate her scenarios on the future of Miramax Books should Harvey Weinstein pack up his corner office and move on, and then allowing Publisher’s Lunch to form our thoughts for us:
I have no inside knowledge, and will subject myself to future embarrassment by predicting that this is the most unlikely scenario. Disney is not famous for letting assets go, and there was a line of movie-related Miramax books before Talk/Miramax started generating standalone frontlist titles. Plus, Miramax is developing films based on some of their book titles. Unless Disney lets Harvey walk away with projects under development, it seems most logical that Miramax Books gets reabsorbed by Hyperion
Yeah. What he said. We’ve played in the motion picture business long enough to know that assets don’t move around without good reason. And, sadly, humans are not good reasons (Guber-Peters being somewhat notable exceptions, but there were strings attached to that transaction). Unless Disney gets something particularly juicy in return (or dumps a dog while the dumping is good), the publisher will stay put.
