ted leonsis Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Earlier today, Peter wrote up a piece on movie mogul Harvey Weinstein explaining how The Weinstein Company created their division Third Rail as a dumping ground for movies they feel have only "ancillary value." Harvey and his younger brother and business partner, Bob, have been under a bit of an attack since ditching Disney/Miramax for their own shingle back in 2005, with a lot of sharks swimming the waters surrounding them, just waiting for enough money to bleed through the Weinstein's fingers.

An article over at the Sunday Telegraph by Tom Teodorczuk goes into some fairly good detail about the troubles facing the beleagured brothers. You can read the full piece yourself to see his analysis; suffice it to say that the Weinsteins have yet to bring that old Miramax magic to their independent shingle, probably for a variety of reasons, not the least of which include the troubles facing the indie film world generally. As Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeff Wells, quoted in the piece, notes, "The Weinsteins have suffered from the same pressures affecting the indie film sector that everyone else faces. There is a glut of product owing to hedge fund firms now investing in films."

Fans of documentary film should be happy to hear that there's a new force on the block: SnagFilms has just opened their internet doors, and in the process they've brought (and bought) our good friends over at indieWIRE with them. Founded by three former top AOL executives (Ted Leonsis, Steve Case and Miles Gilburne), SnagFilms is a unique site in that it showcases entire documentary films for you watch online for free, but then also makes those same films available to snag like, say, YouTube does, and then embed the entire film anywhere you'd like. Check out the widget below ...



Pretty cool, huh? Fans of indieWIRE will still get to read all the same, great content, as well as a new blog called Docsider, which comes to us from iLine and indieWIRE co-founder, Mark Rabinowitz. To read more about the SnagFilms/indieWIRE deal, check out this letter to readers from Eugene Hernandez. Definitely head on over to play with the site a bit; with over 225 documentaries available now (and about 750 available by the end of 2008), I'm sure there's plenty of content to keep you busy for awhile. Let us know what you think!

When you think of Sundance wheeling and dealing, you probably think of the bigger players on the indie circuit: the studio specialty divisions, the veteran boutique distributors, or the fledging mid-level newcomers driven by recent investments. But a cable sports channel? ESPN jumped into the game on Saturday by acquiring soccer doc Kicking It, according to indieWIRE.

ESPN is not getting into the theatrical distribution business, though. Instead, they will help the filmmakers to secure theatrical, DVD and other distribution while retaining, naturally enough, worldwide television rights.

Directed by Susan Koch, Kicking It focuses less on the sport and more on a group that uses soccer to help homeless people. First established in 2001, the competition for the Homeless World Cup now involves upwards of 20,000 homeless people playing street soccer. That number is winnowed down through competition to 500 players representing 48 countries. The doc profiles seven players from all over the world: Ireland, Kenya, Spain, USA, Afghanistan and Russia. I imagine we'll hear words like "inspirational' in descriptions of the film; how could it not be?

Koch is a veteran filmmaker and has directed documentaries throughout the world. (Full disclosure: One of the film's producers is Ted Leonsis, AOL executive. He also served as executive producer for Nanking, a doc that premiered at Sundance last year.) ESPN feels that Kicking It fits within their goals of reaching out to an international audience, according to the indieWIRE article. We'll keep an eye out for any forthcoming distribution deals for the film.

Nanking, a documentary about the 1937 invasion of the then-capital of China by the Japanese army, competed at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival in the documentary competition. Nanking producer Ted Leonsis sat down with Cinematical at Sundance to talk about the film (full disclosure: Leonsis is an executive with AOL, Cinematical's parent company).

Cinematical: The first question I have is about how you came to be involved with this film – it's my understanding that your involvement in this film was much more personal than a producer's role often is.

Ted Leonsis: I was on vacation with my family and went to a bookstore and everything was in French. And the owner had 45 days of the NYT and so I bought them all and read them all. And one of the things in there was an obituary that said, noted author Iris Chang had committed suicide, and as I read it I saw that she was married with two children; I'm married with two children, and I so I was drawn by that. And then I later threw the newspapers in the garbage and that obituary landed on top and as I was going in and out I kept seeing it. As we left I ran back in and grabbed it and stuck it in my briefcase. Then when I got home I did some research on her in Amazon, and bought all her books and was drawn to the story about Nanking.

More after the jump ...