Sure, you have one or two (or three or four) films "under-perform" at the box office and suddenly people start to think things are going down the toilet. Such is the plight of flamboyant filmmakers Bob and Harvey Weinstein these days -- especially after the recent less-than-stellar business of their recent Grindhouse release. And now, as often happens when detractors smell blood in the water, people feel compelled to examine the brothers and their company.

A recent New York Times article does just that. In the article, the author relates the tale of woe that is the Weinstein company's recent track record at the box office. Films like Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering, Factory Girl, Shut Up and Sing and Grindhouse have all made far less than expected and their lack of success has been a cause for concern throughout the industry. The Weinsteins, of course, are not oblivious to the situation. "It could be better, obviously," said Bob Weinstein in the article. "Our drive and ambition are to be better than perhaps we've been."

What is stalwart optimist Weinstein's response to how he will keep his company going through the perceived "lean" times? His answer isn't, as you might expect, "make better movies that make more money." Instead, he has another idea -- diversification. Alliances with companies such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Cablevision, Blockbuster, the aSmallWorld Web site, the Ovation cable channel and the Halston couture house, are all part of the Weinstein plan for world domination. Said Weinstein in the article: "We want to be very much like the bigger companies, in a humble boutique way."

Over at her Risky Biz Blog, Anne Thompson has a piece up on the big scoop around United Artists. United Artists has been a studio in limbo ever since Sony acquired both MGM and UA in April of last year. No one was sure if Sony would simply absorb the other company, or whether they would continue to use their brand and logo as a distribution arm. Today the mystery is over, with MGM announcing today that Tom Cruise and his partner Paula Wagner will help relaunch the new United Artists as partner-operators. This finally lands Cruise at a new studio, after being released by Paramount following the disappointing box office take for M:I3, and displeasure over Tom's couch-jumping antics. The new deal gives Cruise and Wagner the ability to greenlight their own projects, and will serve as a pipeline for them to distribute their own content. What remains unclear is how this newly announced deal will affect the new Cruise/Wagner production company that was cobbled together by investors once Tom left Paramount.

Since 1919 United Artists has had a storied past since inception and creation by four of the film world's biggest stars at the time: Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and director D.W. Griffith. It enjoyed both success and failures in the intervening years, giving birth to such franchises as the Rocky, James Bond, and Pink Panther films as part of its highs, and being the studio behind the Heaven's Gate debacle as part of the lows, which left it essentially bankrupt in 1980. The press release lauds Cruise as, "one of the most successful, critically acclaimed and sought after movie stars in the world. Cruise's films have resulted in worldwide box office totals of approximately US$6 billion and his last two films, War of the Worlds and Mission: Impossible III have grossed nearly US$1 billion worldwide." United Artists is hoping that both Cruise name and star power will help bring them home some of that bling.